Cascade Symphony to include a bit of Halloween at season opener
Published 1:30 am Friday, October 21, 2016
EDMONDS — Cascade Symphony Orchestra has billed its season-opening concert Monday evening as one that comes “With a Bit of Halloween.”
This can only mean that the program includes “Danse Macabre” by Camille Saint-Saens and “Night on Bald Mountain” by Modest Mussorgsky. Indeed, it does.
Bald Mountain is a musical picture — a tone poem — of a witches gathering on the summer solstice. If you’ve never played it or heard it in concert, certainly you remember it from Disney’s classic 1940 animated film “Fantasia,” conducted by Leopold Stokowski.
Bring your children and grandkids to the concert because, yes, it is spooky, and because they will learn much about classical music.
Dance Macabre — the dance of death — is less spooky, but still a chilling little tone poem, marked by its haunting solo violin opening. The story goes that Death appears at midnight on Halloween and calls forth the dead from their graves to dance for him while he plays his fiddle.
Cascade Symphony also plans to perform Franz Lehar’s overture to “The Merry Widow,” an operetta from 1905, as well as the perennial audience favorite, “Bolero,” written in the 1920s by Maurice Ravel. While these pieces are not at all scary, their lyric nature goes right along with the character of the concert.
Of course the highlight of the program will be Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major performed by Uka Sasaki. Watch her fingers during the breakneck presto speed in the final movement, allegro marziale animato.
Sasaki began playing piano at age 5. She obtained her music degree at Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo and then went on to earn her master’s and doctoral degrees in music at the University of Washington, where she studied with Bela Siki.
Sasaki has performed in Japan, Europe and across North America. She teaches at Seattle Central College and maintains a private studio, from which her students have been accepted to some of the world’s foremost music schools and conservatories.
Dave Beck of KING-FM radio plans a pre-concert lecture regarding the program, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the Edmonds Center for the Arts. The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. under the direction of Michael Miropolsky.
The season continues Dec. 11 and 12 with the “Holiday Pops” concert, during which Miropolsky will be featured on violin. The program will include seasonal and pops favorites as well as a Christmas carol sing-along.
If you go
Cascade Symphony Orchestra: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 24, Edmonds Center for the Arts, 410 Fourth Ave. N.
Tickets are available at www.ec4arts.org or by calling 425-275-9595. Patrons are asked to return any tickets they will not use to the box office. Even though a concert is “sold out,” returned tickets do become available. More information is at www.cascadesymphony.org.
