Feeling all strung out by the pandemic?
The Red Deer Symphony Orchestra is offering a musical pick-me-up to beat the long winter blues.
The All Strung Out concert is the latest in the RDSO’s Press Play 2021-22 online concert series. It’s a string quartet performance of works by Spanish composer Joaquin Turina and Canadian composer Ernest MacMillan, who wrote two short worksbased on French Canadian Airs.
The musical lineup is described as: “Soul-soothing and toe-tapping French airs (setting) the scene for a dramatic, folk-influenced tone poem.”
In 1927, MacMillan wrote the two French Canadian folk music sketches: the reflective Notre Seigneur en pauvre, and the toe-tapper À Saint Malo.
“Due to their expressivity and their freshness, (they) have proved to be one of MacMillan’s most performed works,” created when the composer was only 23 years old, said RDSO music director Claude Lapalme in his concert notes.
To finish the All Strung Out concert off with a spark of drama, the quartet will deliver the bullfight-inspired piece from the mid 1920s by Turina — La oración del torero (The Bullfighter’s Prayer).
The Spanish composer explained how the work was inspired, and this is recounted by Lapalme. In a Madrid plaza there was a chapel where toreadors went before facing death. The contrast between this peaceful scene of devotion and the hubbub of the crowds outside struck Turina like an inspirational lightning bolt, and the piece was born.
Watch All Strung Out at no cost, and at your leisure at www.rdso.ca.