In Depth: Echoes of Places Past
Bid a fond farewell to summer and celebrate the “spirit” of the season with Echoes of Places Past
Greenville – Fri, Oct 18 @ 7:30 PMRaleigh – Sun, Oct 20 @ 3:00 PM
Buy Tickets
Echoes of Places Past features works from two composers who hold the rank of national hero: Czech composer Antonín Dvořák and English composer Edward Elgar (pictured). The larger pieces on the program – Elgar’s Piano Quintet in A Minor and Dvořák’s String Quintet in E-flat Major – both evoke a clear sense of place. Although it was written amidst what he described as the “lovely hot hot days” of summer, Elgar’s Piano Quintet is anything but summery. The work is said to have been inspired by a ghastly legend from the area near Elgar’s country home. As the story goes, a group of heretical Spanish monks who had absconded into an English forest to perform a sinister ceremony were struck by lightning and turned into an ominous-looking grove of trees.
Spanish monks in the English countryside? Does it make a ton of sense? No. But does it make for a good story? You bet it does. And it also makes for intriguing music: anxious and moody with but with a jubilant ending. While Elgar himself remained coy about the exact story that inspired the work, he did say of the quintet: “….it’s ghostly stuff.”
Antonín Dvořák’s String Quintet in E-flat Major is cut from much different cloth. Written during the composer’s vacation in Spillville, Iowa, this work – which is nicknamed the “American” Quintet – is the
epitome of summertime. Dvořák, who found rural Iowa to be both relaxing and inspiring, wrote that his goal with the quintet was “to write something really melodious and simple.” A perfect fusion of Dvořák’s signature Czech style with plenty of American influences, the resulting work is sometimes beautifully lyrical, other times rhythmically driven, and always charming and dazzling. These monumental works are complemented by a pair of beloved miniatures. Elgar’s Salut d’Amour is the quintessential love song. Written as a gift for his wife, Salut d’Amour is tender, passionate, and achingly beautiful. (It’s also a not-so-subtle reminder that we would all do well to up our game in the romantic gifts department.) Dvořák’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me” – heard here in the Fritz Kreisler arrangement for violin and piano – is a song about a different type of love: the love for both the subject’s departed mother and his own children, to whom he is teaching the songs. Sweet and nostalgic but tinged with sadness, “Songs My Mother Taught Me” perfectly encapsulates both grief and hope.“Songs my mother taught me, In the days long vanished;
Seldom from her eyelids were the teardrops banished.
Now I teach my children, each melodious measure.
Oft the tears are flowing, oft they flow from my memory’s treasure.”
Founder & artistic director Ara Gregorian (violin/viola) is joined for Echoes of Places Past by pianist Sahun Sam Hong, violinists Xiao-Dong Wang and Stephanie Zyzak, violist Hsin-Yun Huang, and cellist Marcy Rosen.