Prairie Music from Wisconsin Philharmonic

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Wisconsin Philharmonic Songs of the Prairie poster

Music Director Alexander Platt of the Wisconsin Philharmonic closes the 2023-24 season with a concert that will be a delight to all. It will serve as a reminder of how wonderful it is when a diverse people can all come together to make and listen to music.

The concert begins with Aaron Copland’s A Prairie Symphony, devised by Alexander Platt, who combined four separate works by Copland—Preamble to a Solemn Occasion (1949), Letter from Home (1944), Suite from The Tender Land (1954) and Hoe-Down, from Rodeo (1942)—to form a symphony. This will be an example where the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Platt shared his memory of Copland. “All I would like to add about the Copland ‘montage’ is that I had the privilege of meeting Aaron Copland late in his life—once, at his home in Peekskill, New York, and later, as his companion in a box seat at the New York Philharmonic—a Friday matinee, at which they played his late masterpiece, Inscape. He wrote very sparingly—on average, one major work per year—but we forget how much of that is so wonderfully great; and I love putting together his shorter pieces from the midcentury years—World War II and then, the Cold War—in which music played a very special role in our society.”

As for the Hoe-down, the previewer can’t think of anything more fun and American than this! Truly Songs of the Prairie is a rhapsody of what America can be. Copland studied in Europe in the 1920s with Nadia Boulanger in France, When he returned he joined an artistic circle including Alfred Stieglitz. The group held that American artists should reflect “the ideas of American democracy and affirm America.” Copland’s music speaks for itself.

After intermission the string orchestra will return to play Jacob Beranek’s Of a Fleeting Flower (2020). Beranek grew up just south of Oconomowoc but is currently based in New York, completing his doctoral studies at Juilliard as a student of Pulitzer-winning composer John Corigliano. Beranek’s compositions, hailed as “refreshingly upbeat and infectiously melodic” (Fanfare), are infused with his love of craft and his interest in traditions—musical, religious, as well as his Czech heritage. 

During the summer of 2018, Beranek received a fellowship at the Talis Festival & Academy in the Swiss Alps, where he composed Of a Fleeting Flower in just six days for an ensemble of violin, viola, cello and bass. In 2020, the Wisconsin Philharmonic commissioned him to arrange the original quartet version for string orchestra, which is the version that will be performed during this concert. 

Beranek said, “Although only five minutes long, the piece is an exploration of the deeply emotional ideas with which I was wrestling at the time. Nostalgia and longing especially come to mind, moments when we experience time moving quickly yet simultaneously too slowly, or seemingly frozen moments in which we’re still desperately aware of the seconds ticking—those eternal instants which we spend with something (or someone) beautiful but know it will not last. These thoughts are reflected in the music by the interplay of different melodies, the constant change of the tempo, and an intentional control of rhythmic complexity. The title references a short poem I composed at the same time as the original quartet version: For the sweet joy of a fleeting flower: / embraced briefly, released reluctantly, / never spurned, ever felt, / yet awaiting.”

And while our prairies go on and on for hundreds of miles, it is indeed a small musical world. Beranek plans to be in the audience and informed me that “Gabriel Cabezas actually gave one of the earliest professional performances of my music back in May 2017 in Philadelphia. I was one of the winners of the Dolce Suono Ensemble’s young composers contest, and as a result he premiered my trio for flute, cello, and piano Sempre nella luce.

Cabezas will come on the stage with the full Philharmonic to conclude the program with Antonin Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104. “This is no concerto,” Platt said. “it’s a grand opera and a vast tone poem for cello and orchestra!” Cabezas remarked that “one of the great joys of playing this piece is the great interaction and intricacy of the orchestral parts with the solo cello. It’s a giant of the repertoire for a reason, one of Dvořák’s most epic orchestral works.” 

Cabezas is an internationally acclaimed young cellist who has performed with orchestras throughout the world. In addition, he’s engaged with the genre-leading chamber sextet yMusic and with Gabriella Smith as a way to raise environmental and climate consciousness. He added “contemporary music is at the core of who I am artistically, and I’m privileged to count the members of yMusic and Gabriella as collaborators that push me every day.”   

The Wisconsin Philharmonic serves a six-county area in Southeast Wisconsin. Its musicians and staff provide educational programs and music clinics to schools, promoting local musicians through competitions, masterclasses, and scholarships.

Wisconsin Philharmonic: Songs of the Prairie, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 9, Oconomowoc Arts Center, 641 E. Forest St., Oconomowoc.