Programs feature piano quartet, acrobatics and film music

By Peter Alexander May 1 at 4:38 p.m.

The Boulder Piano Quartet presents it’s final concert of the 2023-24 season Friday featuring music by Dvořák and the 19th-century French musical prodigy Mélanie Hélène Bonis Domange, known as Mel Bonis (7 p.m. May 3 at the Academy University Hill; further details below).

This will be the fourth and final performance this concert season to feature a guest violinist with the Quartet, appearing in place of their former violinist Chas Wetherbee, who died in 2023. The guest violinist for this performance will be Hilary Castle Green. 

This program is the second time that the Boulder Quartet has played music by Bonis, who is virtually unknown in the United States. About a year ago in May 2023, they played her Second Piano Quartet. This year they are playing her First Quartet in B-flat major.

Born in 1858, Bonis taught herself to play piano and entered the Paris Conservatory at 16. She was in the same class with Debussy, and studied composition with Cesar Franck. At the time women were not expected to be composers, and Bonis was urged by her parents to marry an older businessman. Because he didn’t like music, she gave up composing for a number of years. 

Later she met a former classmate who encouraged her and connected her with publishers, which led her to begin writing music again. She wrote the First Piano Quartet soon after, in 1901. When the composer Camille Saint-Saëns heard the Quartet, he is supposed to have said “I never thought a woman could write such music.” After her husband died in 1918, Bonis devoted herself to music.

Dvořák won the Australian State Prize for composition—in effect a grant to allow artists the time for creative work—in 1875. At 34 years of age he was still relatively unknown to the larger musical world, even though he had written four symphonies, seven string quartets, three operas, and other works. During that year he wrote a number of larger pieces, including his Symphony No. 5, his Serenade for Strings and the Piano Quartet No. 1 in D major. 

The Quartet is in the standard classical chamber-music structure of three movements, arranged fast, slow, fast. Unlike other quartets of the time, the piano is not placed separate from, or against the strings, as if it were a chamber concerto. Instead the four parts are more fully integrated. Though only three movements, the Quartet is an expansive work. It was not performed for nearly five years, however, having its premiere in Prague in 1880. 

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Boulder Piano Quartet: Matthew Dane, viola, Thomas Heinrich, cello, and David Korevaar, piano, with guest violin Hilary Castle Green

• Mel Bonis: Piano Quartet No. 1 in B-flat major
• Dvořák: Piano Quartet No. 1 in D major, op. 23

7 p.m. Friday, May 3, Academy Chapel Hall, Academy University Hill
Admission free with advance reservations

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The Boulder Philharmonic will continue its relationship with the performing group Cirque de la Symphonie with two performances Saturday in Macky Auditorium (2 and 7:30 p.m. May 4; details below).

Classical music’s answer to Cirque du Soleil, Cirque de la Symphonie presents aerialists, jugglers, ribbon dancers, acrobats, contortionists and other acts to the accompaniment of classical music performed live on stage. Macky Auditorium will be especially rigged for the aerial acts, and the front of the stage reserved for other performers. The performance of selected short classics will be conducted by Renee Gilliland, associate director of orchestras at CU Boulder.

This will be the fifth time that the Boulder Phil has hosted Cirque de la Symphonie at Macky. Their last previous appearance was in 2018. While limited tickets are still available for both scheduled performances Saturday, previous Cirque performances have sold out.

Gilliland earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in orchestral conducting and literature from CU Boulder, a Master of Music in viola performance with an outside area in conducting from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and a Bachelor of Music in music education and certificate of violin performance from the University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music. She was also awarded an Artist Diploma in orchestral conducting from the University of Denver where she was assistant conductor of the Lamont School of Music Symphony and Opera Theater orchestras.

She was formerly music director of the CU Anschutz Medical Orchestra and associate conductor of the Denver Philharmonic.

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“Cirque Returns”
Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, Renee Gilliland, conductor
With Cirque de la Symphonie

• Dvořák: Carnival Overture, op. 92 (orchestra only)
• Ary Barroso: Aquarela do Brasil
• Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F Major, III. Poco Allegretto
• Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 1, Les Toreadores
  —Carmen Suite No. 2, Danse Bohème
• Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 in A major (“Italian”), IV. Saltarello (orchestra only)
• Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio Espagnol, Scena e canto gitano
  —Fandango asturiano
• Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake Suite, Danse des petits cygnes
• Mikhail Glinka: Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila (orchestra only)
• Rimsky-Korsakov: The Snow Maiden Suite, Danse des Bouffons
• Leroy Anderson: Bugler’s Holiday
• Smetana: The Bartered Bride, “Dance of the Comedians” (orchestra only)
• Johann Strauss, Jr.: “Thunder and Lightning” Polka
• Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake Suite, Valse
• Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 1, Les Toreadores

2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 4
Macky Auditorium

TICKETS

NOTE: Indications of which pieces are played by the orchestra alone without Cirque performance added 5/2.

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The Longmont Symphony Orchestra (LSO) concludes its 2023-24 concert season Saturday (May 4) with “A Tribute to John Williams,” featuring the music of one of Hollywood’s greatest film composers.

The Pops Concert, at 7 p.m. in Longmont’s Vance Brand Civic Auditorium, will be under the direction of the LSO’s music director, Elliot Moore. The program will include music from the soundtracks for Star Wars, Jurassic Park, E.T. and Harry Potter, among other popular films.

With more than 1100 tickets already sold, there are only a few seats left at time of posting. Because of the size of crowd expected, the LSO advises attendees to arrive early. Overflow parking from the Skyline High School lot will be available at the Timberline School lot,  on Mountain View Avenue.

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Tribute to John Williams
Longmont Symphony Orchestra, Elliot Moore, conductor

• Music of John Williams

7 p.m. Saturday, May 4
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium, Longmont

Limited seats available HERE