Kelly Kuo, music director and conductor of the orchestra, says that the concert's four featured composers – including Igor Stravinsky, whose 'Dumbarton Oaks' Concerto leads off the program – 'experienced situations back in their home country that may be very, very challenging for whatever reason, whether it be family, whether it be politics … America at the time was a calling card for potential change in circumstances and potential to give them a chance to be themselves musically.'
Composer Zhou Tian was born in China and drew on his Chinese heritage in forming his musical style. His Flute Concerto will be performed by the Reno Chamber Orchestra and flute soloist Mimi Stillman, for whom the work was written, just a week after his Transcend was performed by the Reno Philharmonic.
Another of the featured composers, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, was a child prodigy in his youth in Germany, but became world-famous as a composer of movie scores for Hollywood. Music he composed for a production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing will be played by the Reno Chamber Orchestra. Kuo says that Korngold's music is 'masterful in its orchestration. It makes you think automatically of swashbuckling films from that era in the United States. It's like the early John Williams, if you want to call it that way.'
The concert concludes with the Symphony No. 2 by Kurt Weill. Weill, in Kuo's words, 'lived at a time that the Nazis were going into power, and essentially the Nazis hated his music. When he went over to Paris to flee Germany and was commissioned to write this piece … even though the public really loved it, the critics were very much on the side of the Nazis and criticized him so badly that that was the last piece that he ever wrote for a symphonic form.'
The Reno Chamber Orchestra's concerts 'Stravinsky: The American Dream' are Saturday, November 15 at 7.30 p.m. and Sunday, November 16 at 2:00 p.m. at UNR's Nightingale Concert Hall. renochamberorchestra.org for more.
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Support for 'Arts on the Airwaves' comes from The Nevada Arts Council… a state agency that provides public funding and support to artists and organizations, that benefit Nevadans in cities and rural communities statewide. More at NVArtsCouncil.org.
