On Saturday, May 12, 2012, the Maple City Chamber Orchestra will perform their final concert of the 2011-2012 season entitled, “Build Your Own Symphony.”  The concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Sauder Music Hall on the Goshen College Campus.  Admission is free.

Conductor Brian Mast has chosen five of his favorite symphonic movements, representing a few of the most iconic composers of musical history to create the “Build Your Own Symphony” theme.  From Beethoven to Dvorak, Mast has pieced these movements together forming a paradigm of classical symphonic form.

The first movement will be Mozart’s “Jupiter” from Symphony No. 41 (1788), the last symphony he composed.   This movement contains 3 distinct motifs: a standard sonata introducing the orchestra with the fundamental tone, followed by the erratic rhythms in the dominant tone, to a swelling lyrical ending.

The second movement consists of the “Allegretto” from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 (1811).  “Allegretto” is one of this composer’s most revered movements and was encored twice during its debut public performance. It is composed in dance-like rhythms that repeat throughout sections of the orchestra in a lively tempo.  The piece begins in a minor key and segues to a major key by the end of the composition as the repeated theme progresses through the orchestra.

The third movement of “Build Your Own Symphony” is comprised of compositions from two composers Haydn and Schumann.  Haydn’s “The Clock” from Symphony No. 101 (1793), premiers first.  It is Haydn’s longest and most complex minuet movement and is based on a musical clock he gifted to a friend.  The crisp pizzicato tick-tock rhythms resonate throughout each instrument section.  Critics have dubbed “The Clock” fun and lively.

The second piece of the third movement is Schumann’s “Spring” from Symphony No. 1 (1841).  Known for composing piano and vocal pieces, Schumann finished the draft of his first symphony in just 4 days.  His wife Clara claimed Schumann’s first symphonic composition was named so because of her love for the “Spring” poems of Adolph Boettger.  A scherzo movement, “Spring” starts out rather light and playful but ends with more romantic sounds that the audience can connect with as the season of spring blooms.

The fourth and final movement of the concert will be “New World” from Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 (1893).  This symphony was inspired by Dvorak’s visit to the United States in the 1890’s. His most popular symphony, Dvorak based the composition on the soulful Negro spirituals and Native American music that mesmerized him during his visit.  He felt that the music from these two cultures was very similar, and would be the future of American music.  Dvorak introduces the energetic, rhythmic opening melody, which gives way to more lyrical melodies.  These melodies weave together, sometimes at the same time into a firey climax at the end.

The 45-member volunteer orchestra, conducted by Brian Mast, was founded in 1996 by Goshen native Michael Ruhling, now associate professor of Fine Arts/Music at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology.  The orchestra offers an e-mail newsletter, obtainable through its website www.mcco-online.org.

March 3, 2011 – “Father and Son Composers” will enchant listeners during the next performance of the Maple City Chamber Orchestra.  The concert is scheduled for March 3, 2011 7:30 PM in Sauder Music Hall on the Goshen College Campus.

“Father and Son Composers” will feature rich classical compositions by Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart, Johann Sr. and Johann Jr. Strauss and Johann S Bach and Sons.  The seven pieces will highlight both the string and wind sections of the orchestra.

J.S. Bach’s “Giant Fugue” showcases the classic compositional technique (theme) of tonal repetition.  The introduction sets the theme that is heard throughout the piece varying the interpretation heard in the different sections of the orchestra as the piece builds.  The final coda of the fugue brings the audience back to the original tonal theme.

“La Clemenza di Scipione” was Johann Christian Bach’s last Italian opera for the English stage, premiering in 1778.  MCCO will highlight the Overture.  Bach created dynamic contrasts in the Overture using the wind and brass sections countering the strings.  The piece is complex featuring harmonies that are rich and varied.

“Sinfonia Pastorella” was originally composed for the Moravian herdsman alphorn and strings by Leopold Mozart in 1755. It was later adapted for the natural horn and strings.  The sounds of the alphorn or natural horn can vary from melancholy to spirited.  Erin Yoder will be featured in this piece as French horn soloist.

“Adagio and Fugue in C minor” was composed by W A. Mozart inspired by the influence of J. S .Bach.  The piece was originally written for 2 keyboards.  The underlying influence of Bach’s classical style will transition to Baroque as the strings move gently from the Adagio movement to the Fugue which Mozart wrote in allegro tempo.

“Radetzky March” was composed by Johann Strauss Sr. and is a traditional march heard frequently at celebrations in Vienna. The piece was written by Strauss in thankfulness that his son survived his time in the army due to decisions made by Austrian Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz.  The fast paced march will feature both strings and percussion.

The “Blue Danube Waltz” is one of the most beloved compositions of Johann Strauss Jr.  Like most of Strauss’ waltzes, this one is written with underlying mini waltzes starting slow and leaving the listener with anticipation for more melodic and familiar tune of the main waltz. This piece will feature the strings and harp and will provide the perfect conclusion to the fabulous display of genetic talent of “Father and Son Composers”.

The 45-member volunteer orchestra, conducted by Brian Mast, was founded in 1996 by Goshen native Michael Ruhling, now associate professor of Fine Arts/Music at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology.  The orchestra offers an e-mail newsletter, obtainable through its website www.mcco-online.org.

October 16, 2011 -  “Sounds of Christmas” will offer joyful music of the season by the Goshen Community Chorale and the Maple City Chamber Orchestra in a joint concert on Sunday, December 11 at 3 p.m. in Sauder Concert Hall at Goshen College.  The concert is free and open to the public.

The major work on the program will be a cantata new to the Michiana area, “Christmas Cantata–The Incarnation,” written in 2000 by K. Lee Scott (b. 1950), an American who has become a leading composer of music for the church.

The cantata consists of six movements in a mix of classical and folk styles that show influence by British composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Rutter.  Texts come from the Gospel of John and poetry by Charles Wesley, Christina Rossetti and others.

Lee Dengler, choral conductor, says that “the music is at times dramatic and declamatory and other times lyrical and expressive.”

Another major section of the program will include four numbers from the Christmas section of Handel’s “The Messiah,’” including “And the Glory of the Lord,” “For unto Us a Child Is Given,” and “Glory to God.”

Other short, popular works on the program include John Rutter’s “Donkey Carol,” Mack Wilberg’s “I Saw Three Ships,” and Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride” and “A Christmas Festival.”

Vocal soloists include Merle Sommers, Allen Peachey, Bob Brenneman, Susan Dengler and Peggy Scherger.  A brass ensemble from the orchestra will accompany the chorus in Daniel Pinkham’s “Christmas Cantata.”

This free concert is made possible, in part, by the Indiana Arts Commission, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The 45-member volunteer orchestra, conducted by Brian Mast, was founded in 1996 by Goshen native Michael Ruhling, now associate professor of Fine Arts/Music at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology.  The orchestra offers an e-mail newsletter, obtainable through its website www.mcco-online.org.

The 55-member Goshen Community Chorale was organized in 1982 by Doyle Preheim, then Professor of Music at Goshen College, and incorporated in 1993.  For more information about the chorus contact LeeDengler@comcast.net.

October 16, 2011 – The Maple City Chamber Orchestra will perform two major works for children of all ages on Sunday, October 16, at 3 p.m. in Sauder Hall at Goshen College. The concert is free and open to the public.
This family program, an annual fall event, will include Prokofief’s classic musical tale “Peter and the Wolf” and a new musical suite “Aesop’s Fables.” Both are narrated pieces, with the narrations to be performed by Jay Mast and Sara Klassen, theatre students at Goshen College.

According to Brian Mast, conductor, “This will be the Midwest premiere performance of the “Aesop’s Fables” piece, and by also playing “Peter and the Wolf” we are recreating the program of the premiere performance of “Aesop’s Fables.”

Serge Prokofief (1891-1953) composed both the music and the story of “Peter and the Wolf” in 1936 for a concert in Russia. It has become a standard work for introducing children to both classical music and the instruments of the orchestra.

The story is about Peter, whose carelessness allows a duck to leave a fenced yard and be swallowed by a wolf. With the help of a bird, Peter lassoes the wolf and takes him to a zoo. Each character is played by a different section of the orchestra. For instance, the strings are Peter, the oboe is the Duck, the French horns are the wolf, and the flute is the bird.

“Peter and the Wolf” has been played in concert and recorded countless times; made into animated films, beginning with Disney in 1946; and choreographed as a dance.

“Aesop’s Fables,” which was inspired by “Peter and the Wolf,” is a very new work, having been premiered in Charlottesville, Virginia, in February of 2010.

The five fables from Aesop in the suite are Tortoise and Hare, The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, The Nightingale and the Labourer, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and The Fox and the Grapes.

The composers are Art Wheeler and Paul Reisler, with narration by Tom Paxton. Reisler is a music educator noted for his Kid Pan Alley project of teaching children in schools to compose and perform their own songs. Paxton is a singer and composer of folk songs who has won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Following the concert, exotic daffodil bulbs from the garden of Steve Shantz, orchestra member, will be for sale in the lobby, to help make possible the orchestra’s free concerts.

The Maple City Orchestra presents four free concerts each year in Sauder Concert Hall. The next concert, a program with the Goshen Community Chorus for the Christmas season, will be Sunday, December 11, at 3 p.m.

The 45-member volunteer orchestra, which relies on individual and corporate financial support, was founded in 1996 by Goshen native Michael Ruhling, now associate professor of Fine Arts/Music at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology.

The orchestra offers an e-mail newsletter, obtainable through its website www.mcco-online.org.

Dates set for 2011 – 2012 season

Brian Mast and the Maple City Chamber Orchestra invite you to our 2010 – 2011 concert series.

The Maple City Chamber Orchestra is a growing community of volunteer musicians. We share our love of music with the broader community by performing quality concerts free of charge. We are also dedicated to furthering the artistic growth of our members.

The concert dates are:

3:00pm, Sunday, October 16

3:00pm, Sunday December 11

7:30pm, Saturday, March 3

7:30pm, Saturday, May 12

May 7, 2011 – In its concert, “Dance into Spring,” on Saturday, May 7, the Maple City Chamber Orchestra will welcome the season with sprightly music by Anton Dvorak, Edvard Grieg and Franz Schubert.  The free concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Sauder Hall at Goshen College.

Brian Mast, conductor, says, “I am very excited to end the season with this lively program of music, which is as fun to listen to as it is to play.”

The concert will open with “Slavonic Dance No. 1” by Anton Dvorak (1841-1904), who composed 16 such dances from 1878 to 1886, originally for four hands at the piano.  They were inspired by Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, two of which the orchestra played in its March concert.

Unlike Brahms, who used folk tunes for his dances, Dvorak composed original melodies, although he used the traditional rhythms of Slavic folk music.  “Number 1” is in the “furiant” dance form, featuring fast and brilliant music with surprising, shifting accents.

The second number in the program will be the “Peer Gynt Suite No. 1” by Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), which uses four of the many pieces of incidental music that Grieg composed in 1876 for the 40-scene verse drama “Peer Gynt” by his fellow Norwegian Henrik Ibsen.

The four sections are “Morning Mood,” “Ase’s Death,” “Anitra’s Dance” and “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”  This classical music has become a part of popular culture as well, as it has been used in many films (Pied Piper of Hamelin) and television shows (The Simpsons) and reinterpreted by jazz musicians (Duke Ellington) and rock bands (Apocalyptica).

The major work in the concert will be “Symphony Number 3 in D Major” by Franz Schubert (1797-1828).  He composed it in 1815, when he was barely eighteen years old, although it was not known and appreciated until its publication, following his death, in 1840.  The symphony resembles the neo-classical work of Haydn and Mozart, although Schubert’s last symphonies were more romantic, like Beethoven’s.

The symphony is unusual in opening with a short, somber Adagio that is followed by a long, dramatic Allegro section.  Following Allegretto and Menuetto movements, the symphony concludes with a Presto movement, in a vigorous tarantella dance form.

This will be the last concert of the 2010-2011 season for the Maple City Chamber Orchestra, which presents four free concerts a year in Sauder Concert Hall. “This has been a great concert season for the orchestra, which has grown in size over the year,” says Mast.

The 45-member volunteer orchestra relies on individual and corporate financial support.  It was founded in 1996 by Goshen native Michael Ruhling, now associate professor of Fine Arts/Music at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology.

The orchestra offers an e-mail newsletter, obtainable through its website www.mcco-online.org.

February 19, 2011 – The warm harmonies of the string sections will dominate the “Winter Romance” concert by the Maple City Chamber Orchestra on Saturday, February 19, at 7:30 p.m.  Conducted by Brian Mast, the free, one-hour program will be performed in Sauder Hall at Goshen College.

The highlight of the program will be a performance by soloist Rebecca Hovan of the “Suite in A Minor for Flute and Strings” by G. P. Telemann (1681-1767).  Hovan will play five dance-like movements from this orchestral suite, a musical form that was the forerunner to the symphony as we know it.

“This is a real treat for me,” said Hovan, “since I have never played it with strings and continuo as Telemann originally intended.  I love the piece for its dramatic beginning and end and the more light-hearted, lilting middle section.”

Hovan, who teaches flute at Goshen College and Indiana University South Bend, is co- author of three “Blocki Flute Method Books” and, as former chair of the Pedagogy Committee of the National Flute Association, helped prepare a number of its publications. She has presented numerous pedagogy workshops for the NFA, colleges and universities, and flute festivals throughout the United States, and she is a Conn-Selmer Artist for Avanti Flutes and Galway Spirit Flutes.

The major work on the program will be “Symphony No. 49” (1768) by Joseph Haydn, for string orchestra with oboes, bassoon and horns.  Its popular name “The Passion” suits its somber opening and minor key, but the name probably derives from 1790 when the symphony was performed during Holy Week in the Northern German city of Schwerin.

Other evidence suggests that the tone of the symphony may, instead, be Haydn’s reflection on a Quaker figure in a popular comedy of 1764 who, although he was an earnest person, was also “good-humored, good-natured, or waggish.”

The program will open with the “Canon in D Major” by Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) for three sections of strings with cello continuo.  Although Pachelbel was a prolific and renowned composer contemporary with Bach, most of his work has been lost.

The Canon was first published in 1919 and first recorded in 1940.  It has since become one of the most popular pieces of classical music, now known as “Pachelbel’s Canon,” frequently played at weddings and on orchestral programs.

The orchestra will perform the final concert of its 2010-11 season on Saturday, May 7.

The Maple City Chamber Orchestra, with 45 members, relies on individual and corporate financial contributions in order to present four free concerts each year.  It was founded in 1996 by Goshen native Michael Ruhling, now associate professor of Fine Arts/Music at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology. The orchestra offers an e-mail newsletter, through its website www.mcco-online.org.

December 11, 2010 – A variety of short, tuneful pieces make up the program for the “Christmas Cheer!” concert to be presented by the Maple City Chamber Orchestra on Saturday, December 11 at 7:30 p.m. in Sauder Concert Hall at Goshen College.  Conducted by Brian Mast, the concert will last about an hour and is free of charge.

The most unusual pieces are “Christmas Overture” by S. Coleridge Taylor and “Dance of the Clowns” by the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Taylor (1875-1912) was a promising English composer of African origin who died at the age of 37.  His best known work is the cantata, “Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast,” which indicates his interest in the culture of the United States, where he received an enthusiastic welcome when he visited in 1909.  Other neglected works by him have been revived in recent years.  His “Christmas Overture” is based on several familiar carols.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Dance of the Clowns” comes from one of his many operas, “The Snow Maiden” (1882), although this orchestration derives from an orchestral suite made from the opera in 1898.  Its driving rhythms reflect Russian folk music, which the composer turned to in his efforts to create a national music style.

Two pieces by Leroy Anderson (1908-1975), the American composer, have become classics in pops concerts at Christmas time.  “The Sleigh Ride” is one of his best known compositions, and “A Christmas Festival” is a skillful medley of Christmas tunes.  Both were composed in the 1950s.

From European baroque classics, the orchestra will perform the overture to Handel’s “The Messiah” (1742) and the meditative “Christmas Symphony” by G. M. Schiassi (1698-1754).

The concert will also include a rousing version of “The Carol of the Bells.”

The Maple City Chamber Orchestra, with 45 members, relies on individual and corporate financial contributions in order to present four free concerts each year.  It was founded in 1996 by Goshen native Michael Ruhling, now associate professor of Fine Arts/Music at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology. The orchestra offers an e-mail newsletter, through the Maple City Chamber Orchestra website.

The program for the fall concert by the Maple City Chamber Orchestra on Sunday, October 17, is intended to appeal especially to families with small children.  It will be presented free of charge at 3 p.m. in Sauder Hall at Goshen College.

The orchestra will play two Hungarian Dances by Brahms, “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” by Benjamin Britten, and “The Story of Celeste” by George Kleinsinger.

Brian Mast, conductor, says:

“The Young Person’s Guide” (1946) has become a classic piece in music education for children, since it serves as a lively introduction to the various sections of the orchestra.

Subtitled “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Purcell,” it begins with each section of the orchestra playing Henry Purcell’s theme, and then again presents each section playing a variation of the theme, beginning with the highest instrument, the piccolo, and ending with the basses and percussion.  The piece concludes, in fortissimo, with an original fugue by Britten.

“The Story of Celeste” is a whimsical musical narration of the plight of Celeste, a forlorn melody who wanders the countryside, searching for someone to play her.   The structure of the piece resembles Britten’s, since Celeste moves from one section of the orchestra to another, until she finally finds her “prince charming” in the cello, which plays her in a haunting solo.

“Celeste” was composed by George Kleinsinger (1914-82), who is best known for his other musical narration, “Tubby, the Tuba,” and many popular Broadway musical tunes and television scores.

The narrations in both the Britten and the Kleinsinger pieces will be performed on October 17 by Scott Hostetler, professor of vocal music at Goshen College.

The program will open with Hungarian Dances No. 5 and No. 6 (1869) by Johannes Brahms, who composed 21 such dances for piano solo.  Various other composers made orchestral arrangements of the dances, which are the versions most often performed today.

The concert will last about one hour, with one intermission.

The Maple City Chamber Orchestra, with 45 members, relies on individual and corporate financial contributions in order to present four free concerts each year.  It was founded in 1996 by Goshen native Michael Ruhling, now associate professor of Fine Arts/Music at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology. The orchestra offers an e-mail newsletter, through its website.

Brian Mast and the Maple City Chamber Orchestra invite you to our 2010 – 2011 concert series.

The Maple City Chamber Orchestra is a growing community of volunteer musicians. We share our love of music with the broader community by performing quality concerts free of charge. We are also dedicated to furthering the artistic growth of our members.

The concert dates are:

3:00pm, Sunday, October 17

7:30pm, Saturday, December 11

7:30pm, Saturday, February 19

7:30pm, Saturday, May 7