NHSO Music Director William Boughton conducts Kavafian Plays Mozart Thursday, December 2 at 7:30pm in Woolsey Hall and Sunday, December 5 at 3:00pm at Shelton Intermediate School. He will be joined by special guests soprano Hana Park and The Fairfield County Children’s Choir for Augusta Read Thomas’ Daylight Divine. Also featured will be the NHSO’s own concertmaster, renowned violinist Ani Kavafian, as soloist for Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5.

Maestro Boughton writes: “Ani Kavafian’s Mozart Violin Concerto Project has arrived at the 5th commonly known as the ‘Turkish’ and so called because of its reference to Turkish Band music, which was popular at the time. From Turkey we travel to Scotland care of Mendelssohn and his ‘Scottish’ Symphony which references Scottish folk music — this romantic, wild and rugged work is a real tour de force and emotional roller-coaster. The two poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins — The Windhover and Pied Beauty — form the basis of the NHSO Composer-in-Residence’s work Daylight Divine, a work of extraordinary serenity and beauty that captures the musicality and rhythm of the original poems for which we welcome the Fairfield Children’s Choir and soloist Hana Park — watch her name!”

For biographies of the guest artists on the program click here.

For tickets to Kavafian Plays Mozart click here.

We are very excited to have esteemed poet Margaret Gibson as our guest at SymphonyCity: The Nature of Art on November 29, 5:30pm at The Study at Yale.

Ms. Gibson will read her own nature poems and two poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins that form the basis for Augusta Read Thomas’ Daylight Divine that is featured in the upcoming Kavafian Plays Mozart concerts on December 2 and 5. Ms. Gibson will also discuss how the natural world has influenced her poetry.

Attendees will be able to sample free food and drink provided by The Study at Yale.

Ms. Gibson describes Hopkins as, “one of the poets who sustains me and my poetry.” In her work, Epistle to Gerard Manley Hopkins, which she describes as a letter she wrote to the nineteenth century poet where, “I’m talking to him in ‘his’ language.” Here is an excerpt in which the italicized words are direct quotes from Hopkins:

Like you, I like to look at things.
By solitary revel, solitude’s made
more wakeful, carved and scuppled, as you said
of a snow field whose ridges spread out
in flinty waves, relief maps and the grain
of wood ensculpted there, lawed in by wind
that rippled the roadside sallows you redeemed
by noting their color, ginger, road rut, words
I borrow now for the winter beech leaves,
their fitful quaking in quick wind just
my mood, I don’t know why. And I wonder
at the restraint of your taut vocation,
the fell of dark, not day your sometimes cloister-
Oh, but the roister of clouds, the threshing flail
of syllables, mute spires in blue haze,
panicles of orchis, bluebell bridges of swooping
swallows, tinges, voluptuous fringes-
these flared for you, flowed, showed you-what?

Come to SymphonyCity: The Nature of Art to hear the complete poem and more. The event is free and open to the public. Reservations are strongly recommended. To reserve a space contact Aric Isaacs at aisaacs@newhavensymphony.org or 203.865.0831 ext.10.

NORMAN LEBRECHT SPEAKS AND SIGNS BOOKS THIS EVENING

Classical music observer Norman Lebrecht will stop off in New Haven on his book tour to discuss his latest treasure WHY MAHLER?. The NHSO and the Yale School of Music will host a lecture on Wednesday, November 17, 5:00pm at Sudler Hall, 100 Wall St., on the Yale University campus. This event is free and open to the public. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at a book signing following the event at the Yale Book Store.

2010 marks the 150th anniversary of Gustav Mahler’s birth, and 2011 the 100th anniversary of the death of this extraordinary composer, whose music was condemned in his lifetime but which has now displaced Beethoven’s as a box-office draw. Norman Lebrecht, one of the world’s most widely read cultural commentators, has been wrestling obsessively with Mahler for half his life. His latest book, WHY MAHLER?, reflects Lebrecht’s efforts at following Mahler’s every footstep from birthplace to grave, scrutinizing his manuscripts, and talking to those who knew him. In doing so, Lebrecht constructs a compelling new portrait of Mahler as a man who lived determinedly outside his own times and as a maker of our modern world.

“Mahler dealt with issues I could recognize,” writes Lebrecht, “with racism, workplace chaos, social conflict, relationship breakdown, alienation, depression, and the limitations of medical knowledge.” WHY MAHLER? is a book that shows how music can change our lives.

Norman Lebrecht has written several best-selling works of nonfiction, including The Maestro Myth and Who Killed Classical Music? He is also the award-winning author of the novels The Song of Names and The Game of Opposites. He writes regularly for Bloomberg.com and The Wall Street Journal, and he presents The Lebrecht Interview series on BBC Radio 3 and The Record Doctor on WNYC. He resides in London.

(Source: newhavensymphony.org)