Program notes

Program Notes for October 2025 Concert

Hungarian Dances No. 5 and No. 6
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Brahms was interested in folk music, particularly the music of Hungary, and he traveled the countryside to listen to the unique rhythms, melodies and harmonies.  Folk music is defined as music having no known composer and is passed down by playing rather than written down. In 1869, Brahms arranged many of the Hungarian songs he had heard for piano four hands (one piano, two players), and he wanted himself listed as arranger, not composer, to make clear that these were not his original melodies.

However, Brahms was wrong in thinking that everything he heard and arranged was a folk tune.  In the case of Hungarian Dance No. 5, that tune was composed by Hungarian composer Béla Kéler in 1858.  His piece, Memory of Bardejov, op. 31 was published by a Hungarian publishing house, and he spent the rest of his life defending his copyright every time he performed it.

Brahms only arranged Dance Nos. 1, 3 and 10 for orchestra.  Other composers have arranged the others, including the two on our program today. Dance No. 5 and 6 were arranged in 1876 by German composer and Prussian naval music master Albert Parlow.

Danse Macabre, Op. 40
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

Danse Macabre is a tone poem for orchestra written in 1874. According to French superstition, “Death” appears at midnight every year on Halloween. The piece opens with a harp playing a single note twelve times for the twelve strokes of midnight. Death calls forth the dead from their graves to dance for him while he plays his fiddle, represented by the solo violin. The violin enters playing a tritone, which was known as the diabolus in musica (“the Devil in music”) during the Medieval and Baroque eras. This violin solo is an example of scordatura tuning— the violinist’s E string has been tuned down to an E-flat to create the dissonant tritone. Death’s skeletons dance for him, and Saint-Saëns uses the xylophone to imitate the sounds of rattling bones. The rooster, played by the oboe, crows at dawn, when the dead must return to their graves until the next year.

Harry Potter Symphonic Suite
John Williams (b. 1932)
Arranged Jerry Brubaker

American film composer John Williams needs no introduction.  His work on more than 80 films has established him as the premier living movie composer.  To date, he has 54 Academy Award nominations (second only to Walt Disney,) and he has won five times.

In many of his films, Williams uses a Wagner technique called the leitmotif.  He composes a theme for a character, place or idea that he uses to enhance the viewer’s connection to the story.  The best example of this is in Jaws when many times on screen, the shark isn’t actually seen, but we know it is there because of the music.  This medley from Harry Potter has seven leitmotifs ; in order they are “Hedwig’s Theme,” “The Nimbus 2000,” “Hogwarts Forever,” “Diagon Alley,” “Voldemort,” “Quidditch,” and “Harry’s Wondrous World.”

Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

In 1936, Prokofiev was commissioned to write a piece for the Central Children’s Theatre in Moscow.  The director, Natalya Sats, had become friends with the composer because he brought his sons to the theater.  Sats wanted a piece that would introduce children to the instruments of the orchestra.  She also commissioned a children’s author to write the libretto, but the composer rejected the flowery, rhyming poem.  Four days later, Prokofiev had written his own story, and a week later he had the music.

The premiere in Moscow was luke-warm, due to a weak narrator, but a second performance with Sats as the narrator was well-received.  The American premiere happened two years later in March, 1938, with Prokofiev conducting the Boston Symphony.  While in the United States, he saw Disney’s Snow White and was deeply impressed, so much so that he met Walt Disney in his office to talk about it.  In turn, the composer played his children’s fairy tale for Disney who was enamored with it.  In 1946, Disney animated Peter and the Wolf (with some slight story rewrites,) and Sterling Holloway narrated the short film.

Before the piece begins, the narrator introduces the different characters heard in the musical tale.  The flute portrays a brave songbird, the oboe, the hapless duck, the clarinet, the sneaky cat, and Peter’s grumpy grandfather is the bassoon.  Peter himself is played by the strings, and the wolf is brought to life by the horns.  The hunters’ theme is played by the trumpet and woodwinds with the timpani as the gunshots.

Program Notes by Rebecca Cotton