West Winds In Concert 2007
 

Programme

Les Alizes – Kumiko Tanaka

Suite of English Folk-Dances – Ernest Tomlinson
i. Jenny Pluck Pears
ii. Ten Pound Lass
iii. Dicks’s Maggot
iv. Nonesuch
v. Hunt the Squirrel
vi. Woodicock

Danse Bacchanale from ‘Samson et Dalila’ – Camille Saint-Saens arranged by Leigh D. Steiger

Machu Picchu – City in the Sky – The Mystery of the Hidden Sun Temple – Satoshi Yagisawa

- Interval -

Symphony #3 ‘Slavyanskaya’’ – 1st Movement: Allegro – Boris Kozhevnikov edited by John R. Bourgeois

Their Blossoms Down – Samuel R. Hazo

Highlights from ‘Spirited Away’ – Joe Hisashi arranged by Yukio Endo

Cavetowns ‘Cappadocia’ – Strangely Shaped Rocks Where Elves Dwell – Satoshi Yagisawa

 

Suite of English Folk-Dances

In 1951 Ernest Tomlinson, at the invitation of his sister Freda, a keen folk-dancer, attended a Festival of Dance and Song presented by the English Folk Dance and Song Society at the Royal Alert Hall, London. He was so captivated by the tunes danced to that he resolved to write an orchestral suite based on some of them. The Suite was published in 1954 and has become a classic in the orchestral field. The composer’s arrangement for wind band follows closely the textures and colour contrasts of the orchestral original. The Suite, which is dedicated to his sister, is in six movements, all the tunes being selected from the first edition of John Playford’s The English Dancing Master, published in 1651.


Danse Bacchanale from ‘Samson et Dalila’

Samson et Dalila is one of Saint-Saens’ most important works and the only one of his twelve operas that is still in the repertory. At the time of its composition, it was nearly not performed at all due to legal restrictions against stage representations of Biblical subjects. First performed as an oratorio, Samson et Dalila was staged three years later and premiered in its present form at Weimar in 1877 under the sponsorship of Franz Liszt.

Danse Bacchanale is extracted from the third act of the opera. The Israelite hero Samson has been betrayed by the seductive Philistine beauty Dalila, and is chained to the pillars of the Temple of Dagon as the Philistines celebrate their victory over the Israelites. This Danse, fast-paced, exotic, and with oriental influences, is the musical accompaniment to the wild revelry. It takes place just before Samson, calling upon the Lord for one last burst of strength, brings down the mighty pillars and tumbles the temple roof, destroying his enemies as well as himself.

The Composer – Camille Saint-Saens

Camille Saint-Saens (1835 – 1921) is one of France’s most important musicians. Saint-Saens, like Mozart, was a child prodigy: while he was two he was analyzing Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni from the full orchestral an vocal scores; and at then, following his debut recital, he offered to play any of Beethoven’s thirty-two sonatas from memory for an encore.

In 1848 Saint-Saens entered the Paris Conservatoire, where, in addition to piano studies, he concentrated on organ and composition. Soon he was awarded several prizes, but was passed over twice for the Prix de Rome. He fame grew, however, not as a composer but as a performer on both the piano and organ. He was appointed organist at the Madeleine in 1857, achieving at the age of 22 the most coveted organist’s post in France. Franz Liszt, friend and mentor, pronounced Saint-Saens to be the world’ greatest organist.

Saint-Saens career became a series of increasingly large triumphs with the public. Although Saint-Saens had strongly championed new music during the earlier part of his career, he had regressed into bitter, somewhat misanthropic musical reactionary by 1890. He was a compulsive traveler, wandering from one end of Europe to the other, to Africa, twice to America, and to South America in 1916. He also contributed generously of his time and money during the war years, appearing often at concerts to raise money for wounded French soldiers.
On August 6, 1921, he announced at the end of a concert that he had played for the last time. He died four months later.


Machu Picchu – City in the Sky – The Mystery of the hidden Sun Temple

Explaining the significance of Machu Picchu begins with remembering the Incan empire at its zenith, and its tragic encounter with the Spanish conquistadors. The great 16th century empire that unified most of Andean South America had as its capital the golden city of Cuzco. Irresistible to Francisco Pizarro, while stripping the city of massive quantities of gold, in 1533 he also destroyed Cuzco’s Sun temple, shrine of the founding deity of the Incan civilizations.

While that act symbolized the end of the empire, 378 years later an archeologist from Yale University, Hiram Bingham, rediscovered Machu Picchu. A glorious mountaintop Incan city that had escaped the attention of the invaders. At the central high point of the city stands its most important shrine, the Intihuatana, or “hitching post of the sun”, a column of stone rising from a block of granite the size of a grand piano, where a priest would “tie sun to the stone” at winter solstice to insure its seasonal return. Finding the last remaining Sun Temple of a great city inspired the belief that perhaps the royal lineage stole away to this holy place during Pizarro’s conquest.

After considering these remarkable ideas I wished to musically describe that magnificent citadel and trace some of the mysteries sealed in Machu Picchu’s past. Three principal ideas dominate the piece:

i. The Shimmering golden city of Cuzco set in the dramatic scenery of the Andes
ii. The destructiveness of violent invasion
iii. The re-emergence of Incan glory as the City in the Sky again reached for the sun

The Composer – Satoshi Yagisawa

Satoshi Yagisawa was born in 1975 and graduated from Musashino Academia Musicae, where he completed his Master’s Degree in Music. He studied composition with Kenjiro Urata, Histoshi Tanaka and Hidehiko Hagiwara, and trumpet with Kenji Sekine. His compositional genres include orchestral, chamber and choir music. Recently, his works describing nature and antiquity are very popular, such as “A Tone Poem for Wind Orchestra – And Then The Ocean Glows”, “Soaring Over The Ridges – The Impression of the North Alps”, ”Moai – The Seven Giant Statues Gazing at the Sun” and “The West Symphony”.

His works was performed at WASBE (Singapore) in 2005. Yagisawa is active as a contest adjudicator, guest conductor, performer, and author for music magazines. He is a member of “Prosperous Future for Band into the 21st Century KYO-EN” composer’s forum.


Their Blossoms Down

Their Blossoms Down is a music dedicated to Father Henry McAnulty, former President of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The piece is meant to take on a lush Irish feel, as this best compares to Father McAnulty’s gentle nature. The poem is from an old Irish Blessing.

When the storms break for him,
May the trees shake for him their blossoms down.
And in the night that he is troubled,
May a friend wake for him so that his time be doubled.
And at the end of all loving and lover,
May the lord above give him a crown.

Lower-voiced instruments play the rich "piper's drone" while the melody floats among the sections, encouraging beautiful tone production and sensitive playing. Rich ensemble scoring and selective meter changes bring the work to a serene yet powerful conclusion.


The Composer – Samuel R. Hazo

Samuel R. Hazo born 1966, recipient of the National Band Association’s 2001 Biennial Composition Award, has received commissions at the professional, University and public school levels in addition to composing original scores for television, radio and stage. His original symphonic compositions include stage performances with actors Brooke Shields, James Earl Jones, David Conrad and Richard Kiley. He has written symphonic arrangements for three-time Grammy Award winning singer Lucinda Williams. His works for wind ensemble has been premiered at the Music Educators’ National Convention, performed a variety of All State and Honors Bands and aired in full-length programs on National Public Radio.

Samuel R. Hazo has served as a music teacher at every educational grade level, including tenure as a high school and college band director. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Duquesne University where he served on the Board f Governors and was awarded as Duquesne’s Outstanding Graduate in Music Education. He serves as a clinician and is currently on the music faculty in the Upper St. Clair School District. He resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with his wife and two children.


Cavetowns ‘Cappadocia’ – Strangely Shaped Rocks Where Elves Dwell

In ancient geography, Cappadocia (or Kapadokya) "the land of beautiful horses", was an extensive inland district of Asia Minor (modern Turkey). In the time of Herodotus the Cappadocians occupied the whole region from Mount Taurus to the Euxine (Black Sea).
Cappadocia, in this sense, was bounded in the south by the chain of Mount Taurus, to the east by the Euphrates, north by Pontus, and west vaguely by the great central salt lake. But it is impossible to define its limits with accuracy. Strabo, the only ancient author who gives any circumstantial account of the country, greatly exaggerated its dimensions; it is now believed to have been about 250 miles in length by less than 150 in breadth.
Cappadocia, the vast underground city was discovered in the 1900 year beginning, this ground, in the vast uncultivatable land which the work explanation spreads Anatolia Chubu of Turkey.

The beginning became clear the existence by the survey of the archaeologist of Turkey, although it was thought to be the cavern of mere nature.

At present, it is estimated that nearly 20,000 people of population that has the structure of the underground 8th floor in the biggest ground bottom city where it is discovered and lived here at that time was. All the things needed for the life such as a joint cooking place, sewage disposal equipment, ventilators, wine storerooms were assembled and was established even the place of the education like a/the school. Moreover, this ground bottom city of be surprised to come and the underground city where the point is distant even or more k 9 besides depth are connected.

It is estimated that there are nearly 90,000 people who were living in underground when I convert all the ground bottom cities that are discovered. Even the population of this over is expected sufficient because there is the city of an unsurvey also in the present.

It is thought that the Christians who it was gone after to the persecution of the Roman Empire in an/the underground city around the 4th century for the view on archaeology lived, although it is the ground bottom city where concealed many theories, mysteries.

Therefore it is depicting it including the scenery of the rock of fantastic shape that spreads in the ground where is said that a/the fairy dwells furthermore feeling, of the Christian that even this work was persecuted.


Tickets

Tickets at $10.00. Free Seating.

For ticket enquiries and group bookings, please contact any West Winds members, Ms Stephanie Tan at 98285469, steph_tan13@hotmail.com or Bukit Batok Community Club at 65646317.

Tickets are also available for sale at the door on concert day.

Contact westwinds@cimfoniq.org for more information.