The North Shore Philharmonic Orchestra will present its winter concert on Sunday, February 22 at the Swampscott High School, featuring music by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, Austrian composer Wolfgang Mozart, and Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
Founded in 1948, the orchestra is now in its 77th season of providing affordable access to classical music. The North Shore Philharmonic Orchestra is primarily staffed by volunteers. The group performs programs that span the full range of symphonic and Pops repertoire.Programs are funded in part through a grant from the Swampscott Cultural Council.
Saturday’s program includes Verdi’s “Overture to Nabucco,” composed while he was mourning the deaths of his first wife and two young children. The piece introduces themes Verdi later expanded in his breakthrough opera about the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. The solemn brass chorale represents the Jewish people’s steadfast faith, while the more frantic and sinister sections show the oppression by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, or Nabucco. The overall work is dramatic, with some alternating somber and reflective contrasting passages.
Music Director Robert Lehmann will also conduct Mozart’s “Oboe Concerto.” The piece highlights the galant style of the 18th century, which emphasized lightness, charm and clarity. Mozart is believed to have written the concerto in 1777 for oboist Giuseppe Ferlendis. Amanda Hardy, the principal oboe of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, will be the featured soloist on Saturday.
“Besides her role with the Portland Symphony, she frequently performs with the Boston Symphony,” said Lehmann. “She wonderfully performs Mozart’s only oboe concerto, and the master composer Mozart makes the most of the oboe’s beautiful, plaintive tone as well as its incredible agility.”
The Philharmonic will also perform Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 2.” The symphony is one of Tchaikovsky’s most joyful works, featuring prominent parts for piccolo, flutes, clarinets, timpani, bassoons and horns.
“Tchaikovsky’s ‘Symphony No. 2’ was nicknamed the ‘Little Russian’ in part due to the various quotes of Ukrainian folk songs that appear throughout the work,” said Lehmann. “That region was often referred to as ‘Little Russia’. This term was considered derogatory by the Ukrainians, who did not see themselves as either a small, nor a dependent part of Russia. As such, the NSPO has adopted the nickname ‘Ukrainian’ for its performance of this symphony. Nicknames notwithstanding, this is one of Tchaikovsky’s most ebullient and lighthearted symphonic works.”
Tickets can be purchased online at nspo.org, or at the door on Sunday, for $35 for adults and $30 for seniors and students. Children 12 years old and younger are free.
