Sierra Vista Symphony Orchestra Plays Ghostly Music for the Season Opener
The Sierra Vista (AZ) Symphony Orchestra played its first concert of the season on Saturday evening, October 24 at the Buena Performing Arts Center in Sierra Vista. This was definitely a concert with a theme: the first half was classical music which dealt with tales of ghosts, curses, death, and terror.
The first piece was the arrangement by Leopold Stokowski of the Bach D-minor Toccata and Fugue. For movie buffs, this music was used in the Disney movie Fantasia, with Stokowski himself conducting. In its original organ format, it has been used in a number of old horror films, including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Phantom of the Opera, and more. This was followed by the final movement of Dvorak's Symphony #9, "From the New World." Roger Bayes, the music director of the symphony, believes that this movement inspired the music to the movie Jaws, by John Williams, which accounts for its inclusion on this program.
Next, Concertmaster Debbie Dinkel was death itself fiddling for Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Seans. This piece, perhaps the best known of Saint-Seans' work, was inspired by a poem about death playing a midnight dance in a graveyard, with skeletons emerging to dance until the cock crows, in the voice of the oboe. This became so familiar that Saint-Seans himself parodied it in the Carnival of the Animals, using it as one of the "Fossils" in his somewhat unusual zoo.
The first half ended with the Overture to Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. In this early opera, Wagner tells the story of the Dutchman, who is under a curse to sail a ghost ship which only becomes visible every seven years. The curse will only end when he wins the faithful love of a maiden. Fortunately he finds a maiden who is determined to end the curse. The Overture is full of stormy music, with a love theme and a country dance also included.
The first piece was the arrangement by Leopold Stokowski of the Bach D-minor Toccata and Fugue. For movie buffs, this music was used in the Disney movie Fantasia, with Stokowski himself conducting. In its original organ format, it has been used in a number of old horror films, including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Phantom of the Opera, and more. This was followed by the final movement of Dvorak's Symphony #9, "From the New World." Roger Bayes, the music director of the symphony, believes that this movement inspired the music to the movie Jaws, by John Williams, which accounts for its inclusion on this program.
Next, Concertmaster Debbie Dinkel was death itself fiddling for Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Seans. This piece, perhaps the best known of Saint-Seans' work, was inspired by a poem about death playing a midnight dance in a graveyard, with skeletons emerging to dance until the cock crows, in the voice of the oboe. This became so familiar that Saint-Seans himself parodied it in the Carnival of the Animals, using it as one of the "Fossils" in his somewhat unusual zoo.
The first half ended with the Overture to Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. In this early opera, Wagner tells the story of the Dutchman, who is under a curse to sail a ghost ship which only becomes visible every seven years. The curse will only end when he wins the faithful love of a maiden. Fortunately he finds a maiden who is determined to end the curse. The Overture is full of stormy music, with a love theme and a country dance also included.
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