Featured Pianist John Schindler
It’s time again for the annual “holiday pops concert” whereby many a symphony orchestra sets aside its typical repertoire in favor of well-known carols, hymns and various Christmas-themed Classical pieces. Yes, the upcoming Wisconsin Philharmonic’s concert program certainly adheres to such time-honored traditions; but the event’s billing provides a clue that there might be somewhat more to the affair. After all, a holiday concert titled “An American Christmas with a Star Wars Salute” is intriguing—something quite interesting is afoot in Waukesha.
A major component of this concert, in fact, has no holiday connections whatever. John Schindler started studying the piano at the age of 6, has won both junior and senior divisions of Chopin Youth Piano Competitions and has played with the Milwaukee Symphony and Wisconsin Chamber Orchestras in recent years. Adding to his growing list of accolades, Schindler won the 2015 Chapman Memorial Piano Competition. Now, he’ll perform with the Wisconsin Philharmonic under its venerable maestro, Alexander Platt.
Schindler takes center stage for the first movement of Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54 by German composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856). This quasi-symphonic Allegro affettuoso’s excision from the concerto makes perfect sense—it began life as the Fantaisie in A Minor, a stand-alone work for piano solo, four years before Schumann added its companion movements and, in so doing, created one of the finest piano concertos in the repertoire. Schumann was Romanticism personified; the A Minor Concerto couldn’t have emerged from anyone who was not. The first movement in particular is a perfect distillation of the Romantic ethos wherein moods shift unexpectedly and frequently—at once dark and brooding, then relaxed, then dignified and lofty. Throughout the work’s dizzying turmoil, Schumann maintains structural clarity. Schindler will have many opportunities to show us his youthful talent, but perhaps none more so than at the lengthy cadenza—a veritable emotional battleground in music.
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The “Star Wars Salute” consists of several readily recognizable leitmotifs from the glorious film scores of John Williams, its inclusion on the program recognizing the anticipatory celebration us legion of franchise fans feel regarding the epic saga’s impending chapter. It’s one of a selection of purely orchestral works on the program. Others include the Waltz from Cinderella, a 1957 made-for-TV musical penned by Richard Rodgers; “White Christmas,” perhaps the best-known piece ever written by America’s foremost songwriter, Irving Berlin; and the 1818 chestnut “Silent Night” by Franz Xaver Gruber. “Silent Night” will be performed in Chip Davis’ arrangement for classical-rock fusion artists Mannheim Steamroller.
The Jubilate Chorale and Arrowhead High School Concert Choir add sonorous human voices to the festivities for several charming choral pieces. Frostiana is a work that was commissioned by the town of Amherst, Mass., from Randall Thompson (1899-1984), one of America’s foremost choral music composers. Given the town’s long association with the great American poet, Robert Frost (who had lived there for several years) as well as the Frost-Thompson friendship, Thompson wrote this gentle, seven-movement set of art songs set to Frost poems. The Tender Land was an NBC commission from composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990), but the resulting work was apparently not sufficiently anti-Communist for the network (it was 1954, during the McCarthy era). Hence it had its eventual premiere with the New York City Opera. From this Midwest-based work we hear the rousing square dance “Stomp Your Foot.” We’ll also hear a choral excerpt from another TV-commissioned work, the one-act opera Amahl and the Night Visitors by Italian American composer Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007). If the Classical genre has a “greatest holiday hit,” however, it would have to be the exuberant “Hallelujah Chorus” that closes Part Two of The Messiah, the magnificent oratorio by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). This, too, is on the program.
Some of the most beloved holiday-themed works are not, however, by the big names in music—they’re very old and have obscure origins. Case in point is the traditional carol “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” that goes back (perhaps) to England’s West Country of the 17th century. All of the works I’ve described for you here yet do not fill out the Wisconsin Philharmonic’s celebratory concert, for audience members will also be invited to chime in with a holiday sing-along.
“An American Christmas with a Star Wars Salute” with the Wisconsin Philharmonic, Jubilate Chorale and Arrowhead High School Concert Choir takes place at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 8 in Shattuck Music Center, Carroll University, 218 N. East Ave., Waukesha. For tickets, call 262-547-1858 or visit wisphil.org.
