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STRINGS OF LIGHT

June 9, 2024

3:00PM

Second Church in Newton

60 Highland St, West Newton, MA 02465, USA

Musical Program

Antonio Vivaldi Concerto for Strings No. 2 in D Major, RV 121

Pēteris Vasks Adagio from Cello Concerto No. 2 "Presence"

Reena Esmail Teen Murti

Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet No. 1, op 18, arr. Eguchi

Pro Arte welcomes conductor Adrian Slywotzky for a fascinating concert with Pro Arte’s strings. Rather than featuring a soloist, Vivaldi’s boisterous Concerto for Strings in D Major gives the whole orchestra a chance to show off. In her 2013 Teen Murti (“three representations” in Hindi), Reena Esmail combines traditional Hindustani raag with Western composition technique to present, in her words, “three large musical ‘figures’ that are adjoined by short interludes—similar to the idea behind Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.” Pēteris Vasks’s named his second cello concerto Klātbūtne, Latvian for “presence” and an allusion to the work’s spiritual meditation on the human condition. Vasks has said the work “suggests the soul ascending into the cosmos,” which is especially true of its elegiac final movement. In Ludwig van Beethoven’s first string quartet, arranged for Pro Arte by its cellist Leo Eguchi, we hear the composer marking the genre bequeathed to him by Haydn and Mozart with his own distinct and consequential voice.

Steven Laven

Principal Cello

Adrian Slywotzky

Conductor

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