UNCSA Chancellor and Maestro John Mauceri 

 Photo by Donald Dietz

If you missed the Nov. 19 concert in Winston-Salem, be sure to catch it in the Triangle! The concert will be repeated in Raleigh on Nov. 20 and 21, and in Chapel Hill on Nov. 24.

For more information, visit www.ncsymphony.org.

Hollywood Emigrés and Protégés
John Mauceri, Conductor and Host

John Mauceri, Chancellor of the UNC School of the Arts, is one of the world's preeminent experts on film music. He is the founding director of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19
Stevens Center

405 West Fourth St., Winston-Salem

NEW! Hear David Hartman interview Maestro Mauceri about the concert!

SPECIAL EVENT PRICING: Premium Seating $75 (includes a $25 tax-deductible donation); Orchestra $50-55; Front Balcony $25; Rear Balcony (students only) $15

NOTE: ArtsCard and BRAVO! Performance Pass cannot be used for this concert

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A joint benefit concert to support North Carolina Symphony Music Education programs and the UNCSA School of Music Scholarship Program

Program

Schoenberg: Fanfare for a Bowl Concert (1945)
Korngold: Fanfare from Kings Row (1942)*
Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony No. 2 (1906 - 1939)*
Herrmann: Psycho - a Narrative for String Orchestra (1960)*
Strauss, R. : "Moonlight" from the opera Capriccio (1942)
Korngold: The Adventures of Robin Hood- A Symphonic Portrait (1938)*
Williams: Music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
*edited by John Mauceri

The North Carolina Symphony

returns to Winston-Salem for one night only!

Notes about the Program

By John Mauceri

The program is called Émigrés and Protégés, and is inspired by the journey to America by the two greatest Viennese composers in the 20th century: Arnold Schoenberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Both escaped Hitler's Reich and both lived in Los Angeles, following very different career paths: Schoenberg as a teacher within the California university system and Korngold as a composer for Warner Bros.

Korngold's godfather was Richard Strauss, who became the head of Hitler's Kulturkammer, and whose son married a Jewish woman. Strauss remained in Germany and was seen by many as a compromised man. Today we understand that his remaining in Germany had much to do with his advanced age and his desire to keep his grandchildren (who would have been seen as Jews) from harm.

Schoenberg became the iconic father of 12-tone and non-tonal music and his influence is felt in every film score that makes use of his discoveries and theories. Ironically, while in America, Schoenberg wrote many tonal works, works that have been ignored or suppressed because they do not follow the concept of ever-increasing complexity as a criterion for relevance in contemporary art.

The program begins with two fanfares: one composed by Schoenberg for a Hollywood Bowl concert in 1945 and one from Korngold for the film KINGS ROW and is the model for John Williams' score of STAR WARS.

Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 2 is a two movement work. Left incomplete in the years before World War I, the second movement was composed in Los Angeles on the eve of World War II. In other words, what happened between these two movements is what most people call "the music of Schoenberg." That the composer could ignore the very core of his fame and return to the extended tonalities of 1908 is a miracle of idea trumping style.

The first half of the concert ends with Bernard Herrmann's "Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra." Herrmann was head of CBS radio's serious music division before he went to Hollywood to compose "Citizen Kane" for Orson Wells and go on to compose some of the most important film scores of the last century. Herrmann actually performed Schoenberg's Symphony on the radio for a national audience before his Hollywood period and an excerpt of that broadcast will be played at the concert. His music to PSYCHO is the child of two great émigrés living in Hollywood: Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg.

The second half of the concert begins with an exquisite work by Richard Strauss. "Moonlight" (Mondlicht) is an intermezzo from his opera "Capriccio." Composed in 1942, as the war raged, the opera has a libretto by the Jewish Stefan Zweig, and deals with the eternal issues of lyric theater and the relationship of words and music.

Here is ecstatic music that confronts the daily horrors of war by creating a peaceful oasis of a world free of aggression and ignoring any sense of modernity. Its composition is simultaneous with the Korngold fanfare that begins the concert.

While Strauss was living in ever greater isolation and deprivation, his beloved godson, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, continued the Wagner-Strauss legacy in Los Angeles. His Academy Award-winning score to THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938) became a metaphor of World War II. A major restoration of the score, called "Robin Hood - A Symphonic Portrait" using the original materials housed at the Warner Archives at USC, was given its world premiere in Vienna in 2007, marking the 50th anniversary of the composer's death (and played by the Radiosymphonie Orchestra of Vienna in which four of our UNCSA students played). This will be its American premiere.

The concert ends with music by John Williams. His score to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND is the result of a brilliant synthesis of the non-tonal music fathered by Schoenberg and the high romanticism of Strauss.

From the horrors of war, new works of art proliferate and the inspiration of mentors continues the journey of the human spirit.

This concert is part of the “6 Days in November” series of events and shows that highlight the city of Winston-Salem. Experience the City of Arts and Innovation! November 17-22, Winston-Salem celebrates its heritage as North Carolina’s center for crafts and arts. Visit TheCityOfTheArts.com for more information and details.

Support for the Nov. 19 N.C. Symphony concert in Winston-Salem is provided by:

Thomas S. Kenan III