Mesabi Orchestra to honor cellist Dr. Passal
Mesabi Community Orchestra will perform Schumann’s 4th Symphony, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Massenet’s “Meditation” from Thais, and “The Swan” by Camille St. Saens in honor of Dr. Carl Passal.
The Mesabi Community Orchestra will present three concerts on the Palm Sunday weekend: Friday, March 26, at 7:30 p.m. at the Chisholm High School auditorium; Saturday, March 27, at 2:30 p.m. at the United in Christ Lutheran Church in Eveleth; and Sunday, March 28, at 2:30 p.m. at the Ely Memorial High School auditorium in Ely.
These concerts will honor and celebrate Mesabi Community Orchestra founding principal cellist Dr. Carl Passal, who is retiring from the MCO after this season. Dr. Passal will be featured in two pieces for solo cello and orchestra: “The Swan”, by Camille St. Saens, and “Meditation” from Thais
by Jules Massenet. Dr. Passal joined the MCO at the time of its inception 32 years ago. He has served as the orchestra’s president and archivist. He has performed classical guitar and cello solos with the orchestra in past seasons. Dr. Passal recently retired from his career as an OB-GYN physician with the Duluth Clinic-Virginia. We hope you can join us to bid Dr. Passal a fond farewell and enjoy the concert program that he chose as his “swan song!”
The concert opens with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Overture to the play Coriolan,
written in 1804 by Austrian dramatist Heinrich Joseph von Collins. With alternating powerful, war-like, and tender themes, the Coriolan Overture
is indeed a dramatic work!
The Orchestra will showcase Dr. Passal’s cello playing with two short Romantic-era works:
St. Saens’ lyrical and placid “The Swan” is an excerpt from his delightful Carnival
of the Animals
– a longer work for symphony orchestra that depicts various animals voiced via instruments and sections of the orchestra. The solo cello depicts the Swan, which is the last animal to be portrayed in the Carnival,
gliding placidly and beautifully along on rippling “water” (as heard in the string sections and celeste).
Dr. Passal will also be heard playing the solo melody on French composer Jules Massenet’s “Meditation” from his opera Thais.
Originally written for solo violin and orchestra, Dr. Passal will delight the audiences with this gorgeous work, suited equally well for cello and orchestra.
Rounding out the first half of the program will be Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ “The Swan of Tuonela”. Completed in 1895, this tone poem for orchestra musically describes the Kalevala legend of a swan swimming around the island of the dead, Tuonela. The swan, as portrayed by the MCO’s English Horn player and principal oboist Don Werdick, is musically painted in haunting, ethereal passages over shimmering, muted strings and winds.
After intermission, audiences will be treated to Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, Opus 120. A masterpiece of mid-Romantic era symphonic writing, the piece journeys through 5 interrelated movements, all connected both in time (played “attacca”, or without pause), and in thematic material (musical motives that return, in variation, throughout the piece). This work, first completed in 1841 then revised and widely published 10 years later, was composed by Schumann shortly after he and his love, Clara, won a marriage-permission suit they filed against her father. Tellingly, perhaps, the Symphony includes moments of joy and light-heartedness, romance (which is the title of the 3rd movement, featuring a tender triplet thread played by concertmaster Sheila Wilcox), and also melancholy.
The concerts will be conducted by Josh Aerie, Artistic Director and Conductor of the Mesabi Community Orchestra. Dr. Carl Passal will be the featured cello soloist.
Admission for each concert is $8 for adults, and $5 for children under 12 and Senior Citizens. Special ticket pricing for families of 4 or more. Refreshments will be served after each concert.
