Evanston Symphony Orchestra

Between 1892 and 1895, Dvořák was the musical director of the National Conservatory of Music located in New York City, where its founder, Jeannette Meyer Thurber, offered him the job – he was already an established composer. While the Czech-born composer moved to the United States to fill the position, his stay was short-lived because he missed home; however, his goal was to discover American music. While Dvořák was influenced by both Native American and African-American melodies, he never alluded to any particular melody that inspired the New World Symphony.

Premieres are not necessarily auspicious events. That certainly seemed to be the case for the debut of Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto in D Minor — the composer’s only concerto.

As the son of a publisher and a well-read, studious fellow himself, the young Robert Schumann was interested in being a writer. When he realized his true passion was music, he instead became the only one of four brothers to quit the family publishing business, building a successful career as a composer, pianist, and music critic. Even so, he never forgot his literary roots, and showed a particular zeal for setting written works to music.

Like the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, Beethoven’s Seventh and Eighth are a set of “untwins,” contrasting works created basically side-by-side. Beethoven completed Seventh Symphony in 1812 and premiered it and his Wellington’s Victory, or The Battle of Vitoria, in December 1813 at a fund-raiser for soldiers wounded at the battle of Hanau. In between, the program featured marches by other composers where the orchestra was accompanied by a mechanical trumpet-playing machine, created by Johann Malzel, who also invented the metronome.

The Evanston Symphony Orchestra will perform pieces by some of Vienna’s most celebrated composers at its season-opening concert this month. Among them is Schubert’s majestic Symphony No. 9, “The Great,” a work that lives up to its name.

Music by three of the great Viennese Classical composers will launch the 2016-2017 season. Following a dramatic opening with Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, the October concert continues with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, “Turkish.” One of Mozart’s most popular pieces, the concerto will be performed by Alexandra Switala in her first appearance with the Evanston Symphony.

We open our first concert of our Symphonic Blockbusters season with Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture. This exciting overture reflects the drama of the story behind it. In 1802, he saw Heinrich Joseph von Collin’s play, Coriolan, based on one of Shakespeare’s less frequently performed tragedies, Coriolanus. The play was popular for a short time in 1802 and then faded from the stage. However, in 1807, it had a one-night revival at the palace of Beethoven’s patron, Prince Lobkowitz, solely for the introduction of Beethoven’s overture.