Clarke attended the Royal College of Music for composition as one of Sir Charles Stanford’s first female students. In fact, she was one of the first women to ever be hired for a professional orchestral position when invited to join the section of the Queen’s Hall Orchestra under the baton of Sir Henry Wood. While the first half of the work remains Baroque in style, the variations push the music in both lyricism and virtuosity.īritish-American Classical composer, Rebecca Clarke, was recognized throughout her life as one of the best virtuoso viola players of her time. Originally written for a church concert, Halvorsen’s Sarabande con Variazioni is an arrangement for violin and viola of Handel’s slow movement from the Keyboard Suite in d minor, HWV 437. In the decades that followed, Halvorsen wrote his best-known music, a large majority of it being for the theatre. In 1899, Norway’s National Theatre was built in Oslo and Halvorsen was invited to hold the organization’s first conductor job.

It was Busoni who encouraged Halvorsen to pursue composition and conducting. Here he met pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni, who was famous, among other things, for his piano arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne for Solo Violin. This job was soon replaced by a violin professorship at the Helsinki Music Institute. A violin prodigy from start, Halvorsen was appointed to be the concertmaster of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (Norway) at age 21, in part through the recommendation of his good friend Edvard Grieg. Johan Halvorsen, born in Norway, is a rare example of a famous musician whose life almost never ventured outside the Scandinavian countries. *programs and personnel subject to change Tonight's piano has been generously donated by: Alamo Music Center. This concert is sponsored in part by a generous gift from Denny Ware, and a grant from the Russell Hill Rogers Foundation. William Hirtz - Fantasy on “Wizard of Oz” based on themes by Harold Arlen and Herbert Stothartįrancis Poulenc – Sextet FP100 for piano and winds

Rebecca Clarke - Morpheus for Viola and Piano Handel/Halvorsen - Sarabande con Variazioni for Violin and Viola 'Party with Parker' Novem7:30 pm Laurel Heights Church 227 West Woodlawn Ave., SA, TX annual Food and Fund Drive, benefitting the San Antonio Food Bank

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