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Enhance your concert experience with a sneak preview — Composers come alive and their passions take center stage when ESO Maestro Lawrence Eckerling takes you on an insider’s tour of the history and highlights behind the music.
Maestro Lawrence Eckerling will explore the concert program in depth.
Friday, October 20 at 1:30 pm,
Merion's Emerald Lounge at
529 Davis St, Evanston.
FREE and open to the public.
Please RSVP to 847-570-7815.
Light refreshments will be served and casual tours of apartments will be available after the program.
Give the gift of music by ordering directly from our website and purchasing a custom gift certificate in any denomination of your choice! Certificates may be redeemed for single ticket or season subscriptions for any of our concerts.
You will receive an electronic gift certificate or we can mail the certificate to you or directly to the recipient.
Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, “Resurrection,” by Gustav Mahler is as big as its name. The massive work, which the Evanston Symphony Orchestra will play in its last concert of the season on June 11, is grand in all directions: scope, intensity and length.
Gustav Mahler was born at Kalischt near the Moravian border of Bohemia on July 7, 1860, and died in Vienna on May 18, 1911. Mahler originally wrote the first movement of his Symphony No. 2 in 1888 as a “symphonic poem” entitled Todtenfeier (“Funeral Rites”). He wavered for five years about whether to make Todtenfeier the beginning of a symphony, and it was not until the summer of 1893 that he composed the second and third movements. The finale and a revision of the first movement followed in the spring and summer of 1894.
Consider for a moment the film Star Wars, one of the most popular and highest-grossing movies ever created. Now think about the film without its score. Not so easy to do, right?
The iconic music from Star Wars, which features such movements as “Princess Leia’s Theme,” “The Imperial March” and “Yoda’s Theme,” is one of the most well-known and played pieces of movie music in the world. Fortunately for film buffs, the Evanston Symphony Orchestra will be playing the suite in its entirety at its May 7 concert.
Rachmaninoff’s works have inspired many Hollywood soundtracks, so it is fitting that his Piano Concerto No. 3 has itself played a central film role. Shine, the 1996 movie based on the true story of Australian pianist David Helfgott, depicts the life of a piano prodigy pushed to perfection by his domineering father, and driven to madness by the technical and emotional demands of the “Rach 3.” The film earned praise from critics and audiences alike, and an Oscar for lead actor Geoffrey Rush. It also renewed interest in Rachmaninoff’s technical tour-de-force.
