Festival City Symphony Marches Right Along

Men and women have beenfalling into line behind the sound of fifes, drums and bugles since timeimmemorial. Eventually, military marches became processionals as they migratedfrom battlefields to stages, cathedrals and boulevards. The music became morecomplex, elaborate and festive, for the listeners were no longer troops tryingto keep in march tempo, but the general public who became the recipients ofsome gloriously colorful music.

In their first concertof the new season, the Festival City Symphony has chosen a programentirely comprised of orchestral marches. This is one of their “PajamaJamborees,” with free admission and even the opportunity for some luckyattendees to conduct the orchestra!

Franz Schubert's(1797-1828) Marche Militaire hails from a mass of four-hand piano musiche composed, but in its orchestrated version it has become a light classicsfavorite.

Johann Strauss Sr.(1804-49) is one of those one-hit wonders of classical music (notwithstandinghis renowned son's vast and ever-popular output). Strauss Sr. composed his RadetzkyMarch in honor of the eponymous Austrian general who put down an Italianinsurrection in the turbulent year of 1848. Even if we may not agree with thesentiments behind it, the march's headlong excitement is impossible to resist.

Few musicians have evercaptured so completely the spirit of the written word as did Felix Mendelssohn(1809-47) in his gossamer music for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The world-famous Wedding Marchfrom this score has heralded many a marriage ceremony ever since.

The grandest of grandoperas is surely Aïda by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), a vast workcomposed to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal and given its world premierein Cairo. Thefamous Grand March from this opera fully reflects all the spectacle andopulence of the proceedings.

Carmenwas the last opera of Georges Bizet(1838-75), and his only lasting masterpiece in the genre (though the public wasinitially shocked by its brutality and realism). The March of the Toreadors,which arrives just before the tragic finale, paints a vivid picture of theatmosphere surrounding a Spanish bullfight.

Surely no concert ofmarches would be complete without hearing from America's great March King, JohnPhilip Sousa (1854-1932), composer of more than 100 marches as leader of theU.S. Marine Band and later his own ensemble. Perhaps the best known and mostbeloved of them all is the rousing Stars and Stripes Forever of 1897.

As it has accompaniedcountless high-school graduation processions, one might think the Pomp andCircumstance March No. 1 to likewise have been by Sousa, but it's not evenAmerican. Rather, the composer was Edward Elgar (1857-1934) of Englanda Sousacontemporary, but a composer of many more variegated works. But to the casuallistener, this march is his calling card.

Finally, the FestivalCity Symphony performs the January-February March by American composerDon Gillis (1912-78), who, in a rather straightforward style and much likeCopland, Grofé and Gershwin, drew inspiration from jazz and the American West.

This concert takes placein the Bradley Pavilion of the Marcus Center on Sept. 15.