Help us choose the opening piece for our April 26 concert!
The selection process for our “Audience Choice” piece is coming soon. You can vote to program your favorite music on the April 26, 2025 concert. The five finalist choices are below, with a brief description and YouTube listening link for each piece.
Voting will be open until November 15, 2024.
Listening Links
Keep scrolling to listen to all of the possible choices!
Jean Sibelius
Finlandia, Op. 26
Finnish composer Jean Sibelius wrote this well-known tone poem in 1899 when his country was under the strong control of Czarist Russia. This piece, expressing the people’s desire for independence, moves from a stormy struggle to a triumphant hymn of victory, with the beloved tune that has become Finland’s unofficial national anthem.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
The Sea Hawk: Overture
Korngold was a rising star in Vienna when he fled the Nazis in the 1930s and settled in southern California. He quickly became one of Hollywood’s most important composers. His music for the 1940 film, The Sea Hawk, is full of rich colors and melodies and energy–a fitting addition to the swashbuckling tale of adventure.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Egmont: Overture
Beethoven’s overture, written in 1809-10, also expresses a desire for freedom from oppression. Set in the sixteenth century, under Spanish oppression, Beethoven used this piece to express his opposition to Napoleonic rule. It begins in weighty darkness and tragic melodies before gaining urgency and ending in triumph.
Arturo Márquez
Danzón No. 2
Mexican composer Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 2 is one of the most frequently performed Latin American pieces performed today. It is based on the Cuban danzón. Márquez writes, “”Danzón 2 … endeavors to get as close as possible to the dance, to its nostalgic melodies, to its wild rhythms, and although it violates its intimacy, its form and its harmonic language, it is a very personal way of paying my respects and expressing my emotions towards truly popular music.”
Antonín Dvořák
Carnival Overture, Op. 92
Dvořák wrote his Carnival Overture in 1891. It was the second of a three-overture cycle, “Nature, Life, Love.” In this piece he portrays life as a carnival, full of people, vendors, animals, and even “a pair of straying lovers.” The music is exciting, colorful, and full of joy.