Serenades and Illuminations

Pro Arte welcomes Guest Conductor David Angus and tenor Omar Najmi for an enchanting program of two retrospective serenades and one visionary song cycle.  The Romantic serenades by Richard Strauss and Johannes Brahms stem from a Classical genre of music traditionally performed outdoors in the evening. Although Strauss’s noble Serenade in E-flat is small in proportion—a single movement for thirteen winds—it launched his career as a renowned composer and conductor.  By contrast, Brahms’s robust Serenade in D rivals his symphonies in terms of length.  In Les Illuminations, Benjamin Britten sets the fantastical poetry of French Romantic poet Arthur Rimbaud to equally dazzling music for voice and string orchestra.