PLATTSBURGH — The Trillium Chamber Players perform “All Stravinsky” at upcoming concerts, Nov. 7, 7:30 p.m., at the First Presbyterian Church in Potsdam and Nov. 8, 3 p.m., at the Historic Hand House in Elizabethtown.
TCP will perform composer Igor Stravinsky’s works including “The Soldier’s Tale” with narration by Adirondack educator, writer, and activist Pete Nelson, and the composer’s arrangement of “Suite Italienne” from the ballet “Pulcinella.”
The Trillium Chamber Players are: Timothy Mount (piano), Christine Hoerning (clarinet), and Sarah Bleile Douglass (violin).
“For me personally, Stravinsky has been a hero since high school. I went to a very, very good high school with a great music program, Princeton High School. We sang Stravinsky, which is very unusual for high school. The Stravinsky Mass. He became a big hero of mine. I loved his music. I got a chance to see him because he came to Princeton University and premiered one of his last pieces. He was there, and I sat in the third row. So, I’ve always been a big fan of his. That’s my personal reason,” Mount said.
Hoerning, who teaches at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, has always wanted to perform the composer’s “Suite Italienne.”
“It was a piece that her teacher played a lot and fellow students played a lot. I think it’s a very appealing piece to the audience. Some people might think, oh Stravinsky, it might be too intellectual or too contemporary sounding. It’s a very melodic pieces. It was based on tunes from Baroque composers. It’s very much a good example of his neoclassical style in which he was imitating music from previous times,” Mount said.
In Stravinsky’s “Suite Italienne,” he arranged a suite of movements for violin and piano. The other work on the program, “The Soldier’s Tale,” is also for violin and piano.
“Which is a retelling of the story of Faust where this soldier sells his violin to the Devil in exchange for riches. This is a similar kind of arrangement by the composer. He originally wrote it for about 10 instruments, dancers and a narrator. He arranged it for clarinet, violin and piano,” he said.
Mount has performed the work once before with Janice Kyle (clarinet) and Marilyn Reynolds (violin).
“This time around, I wanted to do it with the narration. So, we have Pete Nelson, who is a really interesting guy. He’s doing the narration while we play this, so that people will understand what’s going on in the music. That should be a whole lot of fun. Pete takes on the roles of the narrator, soldier, and the Devil,” Mount said.