"Romantic Ethos"

The Concord Orchestra is excited to present the first concert of the 2023-2024 season, conducted by its new Music Director, Zeke Fetrow. Dr. Fetrow is the former Music Director of the Grande Ronde Symphony Orchestra and has served as the Assistant Conductor of the Eastman Philharmonia, University of Oregon Symphony Orchestra, Eugene Opera, Oregon Mozart Players, and Oregon Music Festival. He received his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Orchestral Conducting from the Eastman School of Music and holds a dual Master of Music degree in Conducting from the University of Oregon in both Orchestral Conducting and Choral Conducting. He has performed in conducting competitions across the globe, and in workshops and masterclasses with many of the industry’s leading conducting teachers including: Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, Mark Gibson, Brad Lubman, Matthew Halls, Matthew Oltman, Markand Thakar, Helmuth Rilling, Mark Scatterday, Simon Carrington, and Sarah Ioannides.

Beethoven’s  Coriolan Overture was written for Heinrich von Collin’s play Coriolan, based on one of Shakespeare’s less frequently performed tragedies, Coriolanus. Collin’s play has long been forgotten, but this great overture has lived on, in part because it is so representative of Beethoven’s dramatic style.

Early in his career, Jean Sibelius wrote a music for a play about a king who fell in love with a commoner.  Later, he used some of the pieces written for the play as  movements of  the King Kristian Suite II. While this is an early work of Sibelius, predating his famous Finlandia and his symphonies, the composer’s style is already fully developed.

Howard Hanson was born in Nebraska and became the first director of the Eastman School of Music.  His Symphony No. 2, written on commission from Serge Koussevitzky for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930, was much more romantic than the contemporary music of the time.   Hanson wrote, “The Symphony for me represents my escape from the rather bitter type of modern musical realism [that] occupies so large a place in contemporary thought. Much contemporary music seems to me to be showing a tendency to become entirely too cerebral. I do not believe that music is primarily a matter of the intellect, but rather a manifestation of the emotions. I have, therefore, aimed in this Symphony to create a work that was young in spirit, lyrical and romantic in temperament, and simple and direct in expression.”