Fight winter doldrums with musical feasting
Mary Ellyn Hutton is safely back in town where she files this piece about this weekend's concerts in today's Cincinnati Post: Fight winter doldrums with musical feasting.
She notes: "Opening the concert will be the Symphony No. 2 by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. And if you're expecting sounds like Pärt's ethereal Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, an introduction is in order.
"Like so many of today's composers (including Aulis Sallinen, whose Symphony No. 8 received its CSO premiere last week), Pärt spent his early career experimenting with 12-tone, aleatoric (chance), collage and other mid-century modernist techniques. He turned away from them during the 1970s in a dramatic shift similar to American minimalists Philip Glass, Steve Reich and John Adams. Pärt called his style tintinnabulism, a serene, consonant style, sometimes called Eastern mystical minimalism.
"Estonia was a part of the Soviet Union until 1991 and in his early scores, Pärt used atonalism to protest Communist oppression. His 1966 Symphony No. 2 is a dramatic example. In it, he uses squeaker toys, cellophane, extreme dissonance and violent effects in a kind of confrontation between good and evil.
"The 'good' is a sweet little children's tune by Tchaikovsky, which ultimately prevails."
Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra@Music Hall. 8 p.m. Saturday (January 29) and 3 p.m. Sunday (January 30).
She notes: "Opening the concert will be the Symphony No. 2 by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. And if you're expecting sounds like Pärt's ethereal Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, an introduction is in order.
"Like so many of today's composers (including Aulis Sallinen, whose Symphony No. 8 received its CSO premiere last week), Pärt spent his early career experimenting with 12-tone, aleatoric (chance), collage and other mid-century modernist techniques. He turned away from them during the 1970s in a dramatic shift similar to American minimalists Philip Glass, Steve Reich and John Adams. Pärt called his style tintinnabulism, a serene, consonant style, sometimes called Eastern mystical minimalism.
"Estonia was a part of the Soviet Union until 1991 and in his early scores, Pärt used atonalism to protest Communist oppression. His 1966 Symphony No. 2 is a dramatic example. In it, he uses squeaker toys, cellophane, extreme dissonance and violent effects in a kind of confrontation between good and evil.
"The 'good' is a sweet little children's tune by Tchaikovsky, which ultimately prevails."
Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra@Music Hall. 8 p.m. Saturday (January 29) and 3 p.m. Sunday (January 30).
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