The Bowling Green Philharmonia is ready to start a year long journey and will take listeners with it, and
all without leaving the cosy confines of Kobacker Hall.
Following upon last year’s Big Ideas series of concerts, conductor Emily Freeman Brown has programmed
four orchestra concerts around the theme "Cities of Note."
The first concert celebrating music of Leipzig, Germany and London, will be Sunday at 3 p.m. in Kobacker
Hall in the Moore Musical Arts Center. Tickets are $10 and $7 for seniors and students in advance, and
$13 and $10 on the day of the concert. The orchestra will be joined by the Collegiate Chorale and viola
soloist Megan Fergusson. (Photo: Emily Freeman Brown. Photo courtesy of BGSU)
"I’m always looking for connections between pieces that bring out certain interesting elements of
the music that we might not otherwise notice," Brown said.
While the pieces on Sunday’s program reflect where the composers lived, there’s a certain amount of
geographic cross-pollination. Mendelssohn, Brown said, often visited London, where he was a popular
conductor and a promoter of oratorios, both his own and J.S. Bach’s.
The concert will open with his "Overture to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’" conducted by Conrad
Chu, and three excepts from the much later "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," conducted by Katherine
Kilburn.
The overture was written early in the composer’s career, Brown said. The excerpts were music composed by
Mendelssohn at the request of the King of Prussia for a production of the Shakespeare comedy.
Brown will conduct Mendelssohn’s "The Hebrides Overture" to close the first half.
The second half opens with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ arrangement of the "Tallis Hymn," reflecting
the English composer’s activity as an editor of the Anglican hymnal.
Shakespeare’s words return in two of the "Three Elizabethan Part Songs."
The centerpiece of the concert will be a performance of Williams’ "Flos campi" for orchestra,
wordless chorus and solo viola.
The piece, Freeman Brown said, takes its inspiration from the "Song of Solomon," and reflects
the Williams’ studies with French composer Maurice Ravel.
"Flos campi" offers the opportunity for the orchestra to present a composition that’s not often
perform as well as a chance to collaborate with chorus.
It’s also an opportunity to showcase Fergusson, a young faculty member. "It’s a wonderful way to
introduce her to the community," Brown said.
The concert will conclude with Williams’ "Scherzo alla Marcia" from his Symphony No. 8
featuring the orchestra’s winds and "Overture to ‘The Wasps’."
The Cities of Note series continues: Oct. 24 with Los Angeles and Bowling Green, featuring music by
Marilyn Shrude, of Bowling Green, and Erica Muhl and Steven Stucky and Dec. 5 with St. Petersburg
featuring music by Prokofiev and Mussorgsky.
It will conclude aptly with Paris in the spring, April 25. That concert will feature two masterworks of
the 20th century Claude Debussy’s "La Mer" and Igor Stravinsky’s "The Rite of
Spring."
Brown said the programming of concerts is "a wonderful process that takes a long time… It’s one of
the most creative outlets a conductor has."
She usually starts planning in the spring semester, looking for musical and historical connections among
the compositions she’s considering. "Things percolate in your mind for weeks and then it just
becomes clear of what will work," she said. "I just hope that the audience has as much fun
with it as I do planning."
