From the Musical Heart of Europe

The Espressivo Orchestra • October 6 at 7:30 p.m. • Peace United Church Of Christ, 900 High Street Santa Cruz

The heavy-blooded songs of the Danube River Basin will resonate in a concert that Espressivo — a small, intense orchestra will perform at Peace United Church of Christ, 900 High Street in Santa Cruz at 7:30, Thursday October 6. “From the Musical Heart of Europe” is the bond in a program that features works by Anton Webern, Leoš Janáček and Franz Schubert.

Pianist John Orlando will be the soloist in Janáček’s rarely performed “Concertino,” a work as rich in its folkloric coloration as it is original and quirky. The program will open with the exquisite daubs of Webern’s “Five Pieces for Orchestra,” a masterpiece more often cited than played, for which Espressivo will expand to its largest compass yet, 21 players. And it will close with Schubert’s beloved, melodic “Octet” for string quintet, clarinet, horn and bassoon.

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) and Anton Webern (1883–1945) lived in Vienna a century apart from each other, but there is in the music of each the Austrian sensibility of good humor tinged with melancholy. Each also imports to the city the pastoral experience of the upper Austrian countryside — the “Octet” a peasant dance, and the most expressly evocative of the Webern pieces actually features an array of cowbells.

A similar outdoorsy feel permeates the “Concertino” by Webern’s older contemporary, Janáček (1854 – 1928), who lived ninety minutes away, in Brno, then and now again in the Czech Republic. Like his Hungarian colleagues Bela Bartók and Zoltan Kodály, Janáček scoured his country recording folk melodies, and incorporated them into his idiosyncratic musical language.

Michel Singher will once again conduct the ensemble he has collected from among the finest professional instrumentalists in the area between Monterey and Palo Alto. The ensemble’s first concert ever last season was hailed by reviewer Roger Emanuels as “a tremendous success,” and Scott McClelland reported of the second concert that “The full house rewarded the performance with a sustained standing ovation – shared I’m sure by the composer, this work (Mahler’s “Das lied von der Erde”), the performers and their conductor’s insightful vision.”

John Orlando, though having concertized internationally, is a prophet in his own land. The long-time Santa Cruz resident, former head of the piano department at Cabrillo College and Artistic Director of the Distinguished Artist Concert Series, has been acclaimed “Best Performer in Santa Cruz County” by the Good Times Weekly.

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Tickets: www.espressorch.org, or at the door. For further information, call (831) 247-8505.