Saturday October 2, 2010 at 7:30PM

Collaboration with Longmont Youth Symphony

• Beethoven Symphony no. 1

• Haydn Symphony no. 90

• Mozart Symphony no. 32

• Chip Michael ‘You Can’t Catch Rabbits with Drums’

  (from 1st Symphony)

All great explorers must start their journey with one step, and once that giant leap is made, it’s anybody’s guess where we are bound to end up.  It is utterly important, however that one has the tools and skills to proceed.  Beethoven arrived in Vienna in the 1790s with all the proper goods necessary to become the next Mozart or Haydn.  As Count Waldstein, one of Beethoven’s most eminent patrons once claimed, he was to receive Mozart’s spirit through Haydn’s hands (Beethoven was a recalcitrant student of Haydn).  Beethoven’s First Symphony was the beginning of the epic journey on which he would whisk western music over the next two and a half decades, culminating in his Ninth Symphony, and engendering a symphonic path on which few would tread for decades.

As the 19th century British Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon once claimed, “you can’t catch rabbits with drums, or pigeons with plums. A thing is not good out of it’s place…”   Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart were three of perhaps thousands of classical composers vying for their compositions to be performed in Vienna, the contemporaneous musical capitol of the western world.  What keeps us talking about them today is their ability to take all the abundant raw materials of their day, melodies, harmony, rhythms, instruments, and put them in their ‘place’ by weaving into magical creations that to this day continue to transport the listener on a tremendously thrilling journey as they awaken the spirit within us.

For the American premiere of Chip Michael’s You can’t catch rabbits with drums, from his First Symphony, the composer employs the raw materials of a whisking musical motive tossing itself around the orchestra against the percussion section.  These two elements give chase to each other throughout the work, representing the universal concept of the hunter and the hunted, the dreamer and the dream, the explorer and the discovery.

As what most musicologists define as an actual Overture, Mozart’s Symphony no. 32 is in one movement, and is very unique among his symphonic output in that it was most likely conceived as the humble beginning to an opera.  As an intrepid explorer himself, Mozart traveled Europe his entire life, assimilating a plethora of musical styles and idioms.  The Symphony no. 32 is one of the most delightful Italianate overtures in existence and is one of the first instances of cyclicism, where a theme, being transformed on it’s journey over multiple movements, continues to recur and by the finale gloriously returns home.

If Beethoven inherited one major characteristic from his teacher, Franz Joseph Haydn, it would most certainly have to be the latter’s musical humor.  Haydn was known to have instructed his musicians to walk off the stage one by one at the end of his ‘Farewell’ Symphony to send a hint to his patron Prince Esterhazy that the musicians were ready to return home to their families after a long summer leave at Eisenstadt.  Haydn is also known for throwing in a fortissimo (very loud) chord in the eighth measure of what otherwise is a very delicate slow movement in his ‘Surprise’ Symphony to rouse the audience, especially the sporadically snoozing noblemen.  While all great journeys must come to an end, Haydn’s 90th Symphony in C major questions the very nature of the actual end of a work of art.  By peppering the finale with musical deceptions, the composer’s light-hearted wit has kept audiences chuckling for over two centuries.