DVORAK’S SEVENTH SYMPHONY

6:30pm Free Pre-Concert Conversations

Join Maestra González-Granados and CEO Michael Smith in the hall before the show to hear more about the music!

In this Masterworks Series finale, the CSO travels through time and across the globe with music heavily infused with folk dances and sounds masterfully merged with orchestrated composition. Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto, Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7, and Novelettes No. 3 & 4 by Samuel Coleridge Taylor.

Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony with Grieg’s Piano Concerto

Chicago Sun-Times wrote of conductor Lina González-Granados, “With her obvious podium skills, she is on her way to a vibrant career.” González-Granados has won multiple prizes and is internationally recognized for her powerful interpretations of the symphonic and operatic repertoire. In recent years, she has made debuts stateside with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, National Symphony, and Houston Symphony.

Pianist Sara Buechner returns to the CSO to perform Edvard Grieg‘s Piano Concerto in A minor. Grieg, also a talented pianist in addition to being a composer, wrote his Piano Concerto with obvious understanding and expertise of the keys. As such, it has become one of the most popular piano concertos among soloists and audiences alike. Expressive cellos, wistful woodwinds, and horns make significant appearances throughout, but never so that the piece becomes excessively emotive. The final movement of the concerto integrates inspiration from Grieg’s cultural heritage with a jaunty tune representing a dance common to rural Norway called the halling.

Antonín Dvořák is well-known for often melding his native Bohemian folk music with traditional symphonic structures. The result in his Symphony No. 7 is a delightful, at times dramatic, and sometimes downright hummable work. His distinctive integration is heard in the third movement when the rustic, easygoing dance plays over top of a traditional waltzlike melody. Dvořák accomplished what he intended – for Czech music to move the world – with his Seventh Symphony, which is considered by many to be his best.

MORE ON THE MUSIC:

• “Buechner is a deeply experienced musician with the kind of technique frequently heard downstairs in Carnegie’s main hall; agile, powerful, and exciting. ” – New York Classical Review
• Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor was the only concerto the composer ever completed. “My new symphony must be such as to make a stir in the world,” Dvořák wrote to a friend during 1884 (the year his Seventh Symphony was written).
• “A show of raw power, an aural force to glue you to your seat.” – Los Angeles Times on González-Granados

The breadth of Ms. Buechner’s artistry, spanning thundering fortissimos and chiseled passagework, as well as lyrical moments colored by a poetic sensitivity that was tempered by wit and judicious restraint” – The New York Times

PROGRAM

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Novelette No. 3 in A minor, Op. 52

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Novelette No. 4 in D Major, Op. 52

Edvard Grieg               
Piano Concerto in A minor

Antonín Dvořák           
Symphony No. 7 in D minor

ARTISTS

Lina González-Granados, Conductor
Sara Davis Buechner, Piano

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