Excursions II

The Summer Sinfonietta partners with the Goodwood Museum & Gardens to present its third free concert of the summer season with a program of classical music about Excursions through Europe and the Middle East. This concert features works by composers either writing about romanticized distant locations, or who wrote with nostalgia about their own homelands. The concert opens with the overture to Gioacchino Rossini’s 1823 opera Semiramide. One of his finest examples in the genre, Semiramide tells the tragic story of the legendary Queen Semiramis, who ruled ancient Assyria and led its army into battle disguised as her son; the overture is full of the wit and craft that so characterize Rossini’s mature style. The orchestra continues with the Suite Pastorale by Emmanuel Chabrier. This set of four short pieces illustrates musically the Auvergne region in central France, known especially for its rich tradition of dance, where Chabrier grew up. Bedřich Smetana’s Šárka concludes the first half of the concert. Šárka, the third tone poem from Smetana’s Má Vlast (My Homeland), tells the story of an Amazon woman from Czech legend, after whom the Šárka Valley near Prague is named. Scorned by an unfaithful husband, Šárka lures a group of male soldiers to sleep and massacres them out of revenge.

The second half of the concert opens with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s bouncy march Sea Songs, based on three English sea shanties. Originally a march for military band, Vaughan Williams later orchestrated the work in response to its popularity in the kingdom. The orchestra concludes the program with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s exciting Symphony No. 36 in C, called the “Linz” symphony after a city in northern Austria on the banks of the Danube. Mozart wrote this piece frantically in Linz for a performance in November of 1783, shortly after marrying against his father’s wishes. Despite the drama in Mozart’s personal life, the Linz symphony bursts with vitality and unbridled joy.

The Summer Sinfonietta was formed in 2014 to provide a creative outlet for orchestral musicians in Tallahassee during the summer months. Students from Florida State University play in, conduct, and organize the ensemble, which is dedicated to providing free, casual, energetic concerts to the Tallahassee community. Matthew Bishop, a recent graduate of FSU’s orchestral conducting program, is the ensemble’s music director and conductor.