These Worlds in Us: Grieg, Mazzoli, & Beethoven

Friday, July 19 at 7:30PM, Sunset Center Theater

Grete Pedersen, conductor; Eric Lu, piano; Festival Orchestra

Pianist Eric Lu makes his Carmel Bach Festival debut in the stunning Piano Concerto by Edvard Grieg. Lu’s performances are described as “…Playing of high emotional intelligence, always geared to a connective and longer view, delivered by unfussy, unflappable and prodigiously complete technique.”

Missy Mazzoli dedicated These Worlds in Us to her father, a soldier in Vietnam. She writes, “In talking to him it occurred to me that, as we grow older, we accumulate worlds of intense memory within us, and that grief is often not far from joy. I like the idea that music can reflect painful and blissful sentiments in a single note or gesture, and sought to create a sound palette that I hope is at once completely new and strangely familiar to the listener.”

The first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony form the most universally recognized motive in music in the most famous symphony ever composed. Beethoven is the master of technique in thematic development. Composer Robert Schumann wrote, “It still exercises its power over all ages, just as those great phenomena of nature that, no matter how often they occur, fill us with awe and wonder. This symphony will go on centuries hence, as long as the world and the world’s music endure.”

Program

Concerto for Piano, op. 16, A minor (30 minutes) | EDVARD GRIEG (1843-1907)

I. Allegro molto moderato

II. Adagio

III. Allegro moderato molto e marcato

These Worlds In Us (9 minutes) | MISSY MAZZOLI (1980-)

INTERMISSION

Symphony no. 5, op. 67, C minor (34 minutes) | LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

I. Allegro con Brio

II. Andante con moto

III. Allegro

IV. Allegro