Thank you for attending this afternoon’s performance! Throughout the program, you will hear the winners from our 2024 Concerto Composition alongside two famous symphonies that were left unfinished. Learn more about our soloists and pieces below, and consider donating to help our mission. Your support helps us continue our mission of musical and artistic collaboration and continue concerts and competitions like the ones showcased this afternoon. At the conclusion of the performance, feel free to stop by our information table to get your piece of our ‘Unfinished’ puzzle as a gift and reminder of our performance this afternoon.
2024 Concerto Competition Winners
Lauren López Ochoa, winner of the Young Adult Musician category of the Middle Tennessee Sinfonietta’s 2024 Concerto Competition, is a flute and piccolo player from Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Miss Ochoa received her Bachelor of Music degree at The University of Southern Mississippi and recently earned the Master of Music degree in Flute Performance at Austin Peay State University. Miss Ochoa was winner of the 2020 Mississippi Teachers Association State Collegiate Competition. In March 2022, she was selected to present a lecture recital performing Latin American music at the Mid-South Flute Festival. Miss Ochoa is currently pursuing a second master’s concentration in Music Education at APSU.
Natalie Mays, winner of the Adult Musician category of the Middle Tennessee Sinfonietta’s 2024 Concerto Competition, is a cellist based in Nashville, TN. A native of Austin, TX, Mays moved to Nashville in 2012 to pursue a Bachelor’s of Music at Belmont University, and subsequently earned a Master’s in Music from Middle Tennessee State University. Mays has played in Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra, The Jackson Symphony, and Middle Tennessee Sinfonietta, among other ensembles. Mays’s favorite composers include Johannes Brahms, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Sir Edward Elgar. Beyond cello performance, she enjoys reading, embroidery, and talking about music history on the podcast The Cello Sisters.
Program Notes
Antonio Vivaldi wrote his Piccolo Concerto in C Major from 1728-1729 with a standard three movements: Allegro, Largo, and Allegro Molto. Vivaldi wrote only three concertos for “flautino,” the sopranino recorder, which is the recorder that got most concerti in the 18th century. In present times, however, the concerto is usually performed on the piccolo. The concerto is virtuosic, starting energetically and leading to an incredible display of agility from the soloist, repeated in further solo episodes. The largo movement, written in E minor, is in the form of a siciliana, a dance aria common in the Italian Baroque period. The third movement moves back to the key of the first movement and showcases numerous trills, arpeggios, and triplet rhythmic patterns, highlighting the virtuosity of the performer.
Franz Schubert started his famous Symphony No. 8 in B minor in 1822, but left the work incomplete after completing just two movements, with a piano sketch of the third movement also surviving. There are arguments that a fourth movement was also written and later reused by Schubert in his later compositions, but they remain unproven. Many have debated why Schubert left the work incomplete, as he died nearly seven years after discarding his Symphony No. 8. Regardless of why he decided to not continue writing the piece, Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony remains one of the most well-known and liked symphonies throughout the world.
The first movement, Allegro moderato, is written in sonata form, with two main subjects throughout the piece. The piece opens with a short introduction, before the first melody is heard in the oboe and clarinet. The second melody then takes over, and is stated by the cellos and later violins. You might even have heard it, sung to Sigmund Spaeth’s words as “This is – the symphony – that Schubert wrote and never finished”. The piece then delves into a contrasting development that evokes a similar style to that of Beethoven before the opening theme returns to conclude the movement.
The second movement, Andante con moto, is written in an abbreviated sonata form, with a lyrical first melody and contemplative second theme that complement each other throughout the piece. It is important to note the harmonic language in this movement especially, as Schubert takes us into keys that are not necessarily characteristic for that time period and surprises the listener at every turn. This set a precedent for harmonic exploration in the Romantic period, and truly makes this movement unique.
Sir Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor was completed in 1919, and was one of Elgar’s last major orchestral works he wrote before his death. Composed in the aftermath of World War I, the premiere of the concerto was a disaster and did not receive much popularity. At the time after the war, Elgar’s music was seen as old-fashioned, still rooted in the Edwardian era rather than a new era after the war. The concerto began to gain popularity in the 1950s, with the help and voice of cellist Jacqueline du Pré. The work has now become one of the most frequently performed and studied cello concertos throughout the world.
The first movement, marked Adagio – Moderato, is written in ternary form (a first melody followed by a second melody before returning to the first), and begins with a short introduction from the soloist before beginning the first theme. Much of the movement is a call and response between the cellist and orchestra, providing slight variations and reiterations while moving through the movement.
Alexander Borodin began his Symphony No. 3 in A minor in 1882, leaving a sketch of the first movement and completed the second movement before he died in 1887. The symphony was later finished by Alexander Glazunov, a composer and friend of Borodin’s, who orchestrated both sections and reworked the first movement, which was originally a sketch for string quartet. A doctor and chemist by profession, Borodin was one of the ‘Mighty Five’, a group of five Russian composers that used Russian folk melodies and harmonies and integrated them into the western classical music forms. Though music remained a second profession in his life, only composing in his spare time or while he was ill, his works are still admired and performed throughout the world.
The first movement, marked Moderato Assai, opens with an unaccompanied oboe solo, further expanding to the woodwinds. The movement is then driven and transformed through a forward momentum, both in the melodic material from Borodin and instrumentation from Glazunov. The movement is constantly transformed, using different characters and moods throughout the orchestra while showcasing the melodic material.
The second movement, marked Scherzo Vivo, is in the unusual, uneven meter of five, which is predominant in Eastern European and Mediterranean music. The scherzo is in a typical style, a quick and energetic opening, followed by a contrasting lyrical middle that begins with an unaccompanied clarinet solo (similar to the opening of the first movement) before the return of the energetic material from the first section.