Learn more about the memorable programs offered by the Spartanburg Philharmonic through insightful anecdotes and historical notes about the composers and their works.
For Vaughan Williams was the most English of composers. Son of a prosperous clergyman, great-nephew of Charles Darwin, family friend of Lord Bernard Russell, Vaughan Williams possessed in full the British love of nature and propensity for long rambles from village to village.
Read MoreWalton spent the WWII years working for the British War Office, writing music for patriotic-themed films. The greatest of these was Olivier’s 1944 Henry V.
Read MoreJohn Powell’s score for “How to Train Your Dragon” has been among the most-programmed of the last decade, and has been arranged for almost every imaginable combination of instruments. The London-born-and-bred Powell was for some years Hans Zimmer’s assistant, and it was Zimmer who helped to set up Powell with the film’s producers.
Read MoreDvorak sent in a pile of unpublished and unperformed manuscripts to a composition contest, not knowing when he did so who its judges were and hoping vaguely for a financial prize. Well, the judges were Johannes Brahms and his friend, the eminent music critic Eduard Hanslick, and Brahms recognized Dvorak’s genius at once.
Read MoreStarting in the Black Sea, 18-year-old Rimsky-Korsakov sailed through the Mediterranean to England, where he picked up an American bunkmate named Thompson. Those experiences – seeing the countries of the world and meeting them through music – were inspiration enough to drive Rimsky to become a self-taught master of composition and orchestration (his textbook on the latter subject is still in print).
Read MoreIn 2016, BBC Music magazine polled 151 conductors to determine, as the headline put it, “the 10 Greatest Symphonies of All Time!” Three of the top 10 were by Gustav Mahler, and Mahler’s nine entries in the symphonic canon are often seen as the apotheosis of the huge late-Romantic symphony.
Read MoreThe Philharmonic begins this season of adventure and discovery with a new work, Anna Clyne’s propulsive and appealing “This Midnight Hour.”
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