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Maestro Peter Bay leads the final concert of our season in unexpected company: Ludwig van Beethoven's first symphony shares a stage with a pack of cartoon dogs. Those dogs are Thurber's Dogs, a suite of short orchestral sketches by Peter Schickele, better known as his satirical alter ego P.D.Q. Bach, after the drawings of James Thurber. Each movement captures a different personality, clumsy or noble or distracted, and each is crafted with charm, precision, and Schickele's sharp ear for musical character.Our principal oboist Laura Arganbright is featured in Marie Clémence de Grandval's Oboe Concerto, a lyrical and poised work from 1877. Grandval studied with Chopin, and Paris's most prestigious orchestra played this concerto in her lifetime. Then it disappeared. Laura proposed bringing it back, drawn to "a relatively unknown female composer whose music is newly being rediscovered."
Peter Maxwell Davies wrote Farewell to Stromness as a protest against a uranium mine proposed for Orkney, where he lived. Its slow walking bass carries the townspeople out of their homes, and its gentle, sometimes sad lyricism understates what the protest won: the mine was never built. Davies later said the piece had almost become a folk tune. The concert concludes with Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 1, a bold and youthful entry into the symphonic tradition he inherited from Haydn and Mozart. Playful in its turns and grounded in Classical form, the finale reveals the personality of a composer just beginning to make his mark.
Peter Bay, conductor; Laura Arganbright, oboe; Arizona Philharmonic.
Pre-concert talk at 2:00 pm.
Tickets: Tier 1 $69, Tier 2 $54, Tier 3 $28, 21 and under $10, K–12 teacher with ID $15. Art 4 All™ pay-what-you-can tickets are available to those who can't afford a ticket. Tickets and details: azphil.org/event/beethoven-goes-to-the-dogs/
Thursday, April 22, free: conductor Peter Bay on the program that puts Beethoven's First Symphony in the company of Schickele's Thurber's Dogs. Time and registration to be announced at azphil.org/event/olli-bay-april/
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Event venue
Ruth Street Theater, 1050 N Ruth St, Prescott, AZ, United States
Tickets
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