Sylvan Winds Announce Final Concert of 2016-17 Season

The Sylvan Winds announce the final concert of the 2016-17 Season celebrating music, culture, and history. Performing in historic and notable New York City buildings and performance venues, the ensemble creates imaginative and informative programs that complement the environs of each space.

Viva Italia!

SUNDAY, MAY 7, 2017 at 3:00 PM

The Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, Corner of Mott and Prince Streets

The Sylvan Winds

Svjetlana Kabalin, flute; Kathy Halvorson, oboe; Nuno Antunes, clarinet;

Gina Cuffari, bassoon; Zohar Schondorf, horn

Program

Giuseppe Cambini (1746-1825) Quintet No. 3 in F Major

Giovanni Gualdo da Vandero (?-1771) Trio Sonata in D Major

Giorgio Ghedini (1892-1965) Allegro from Quintetto No. 1 (1910)

Nino Rota (1911-1979) Petite Offrande Musicale

Saverio Mercadante (1795-1870) Quartet No. 3 in F Major

Davide Zannoni (b. 1958) Quattro Quadri (1995)

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) Gli Uccelli (arr. by T. Cramer)

Program subject to change.

This concert is made possible, in part, with support from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Tickets: $40, $25 seniors/students

Tickets for a Post-Concert Reception are available for an additional $50 - 210

Tickets available at www.sylvanwinds.com or at the door

For reservations, please call 212 / 222-3569

Or email sylvanwinds@att.net

Giuseppe Maria Cambini, (1746 / Livorno, Italy - 1825 / Bicêtre, France) A violinist by training and a string quartet pioneer - with 149 to his credit - Cambini was also the first to compose specifically for wind quintet, with a modest output of only three, the third considered his best. Despite this innovation, he stayed within the rococo `galant style' tradition and did not explore the individuality of wind instruments, preferring the homogeneous sound of the whole ensemble. His early life is shrouded in mystery, including an uncorroborated story of capture by pirates, and until recently there was uncertainty about the time or place of his death. Settling in Paris in 1770, he was held in high esteem as a composer (with 600 published works), performer, and author of a violin method.

Giovanni Gualdo Da Vandero, (? / Italy - 1771 / Philadelphia) Details of his parents, background, and early life are unknown. He arrived in Philadelphia in 1767 via London where he had two sets of sonatas (op. 1 and 2) for two violins or mandolins, and harpsichord or cello, published. He opened a shop on Walnut Street as a wine merchant and music dealer in August 1767, offering lessons on several different instruments, including violin, flute, guitar and mandolin the following year. He is also credited with giving the first known performance on a mandolin in this country. Not entirely successful, he was about to return to Europe in 1769, when he opted to produce a subscription series of concerts every other week that included his own works along with those of J.C. Bach, Campioni, and Geminiani. The series continued with varying degrees of success through 1771, when he suffered from "a Fall from his House". Despite a short career, he had considerable influence in shaping early musical tastes in Philadelphia.

Giorgio Federico Ghedini, (1892 / Cuneo - 1965 Nervi, nr Genoa) Born in Piedmont where he began piano and organ lessons as a child, after moving to the province's capital Turin in 1905, he continued studying cello and composition, first at the local and then Bologna's Liceo Musicale. Following his graduation in 1911, he worked as a coach at the local theater before turning to teaching at conservatories in Turin (1918-38), Parma (1938-41) and Milan (1941-62), including the Milan directorship in 1951 until his retirement. During his Milan years, one of his composition students was Luciano Berio.

Nino Rota, (1911/ Milan - 1979) is best known for his film scores, notably The Godfather series and the films of Federico Fellini, according to whom, "The most precious collaborator I have ever had ... was Nino Rota [who] had a geometric imagination, a musical approach worthy of celestial spheres [with] no need to see images from my movies." Among ten operas, five ballets and many instrumental works, Rota's 1977 work The Italian Straw Hat, was presented by the Santa Fe Opera. Born in Milan, he studied at the conservatory under Ildebrando Pizzetti. Encouraged by Toscanini, Rota moved to the United States where he lived from 1930 to 1932. As a scholarship student at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, he took classes in orchestra with Fritz Reiner and in composition with Rosario Scalero, Samuel Barber's teacher.

Davide Zannoni (B. 1958 / Spoleto) began his career as a jazz drummer, subsequently joining the Percussion Section of the Maggio Fiorentino Orchestra in Florence, Italy, under the direction of Zubin Mehta. After studying composition and piano privately and receiving a PhD in Humanities from the University of Bologna, he accepted a scholarship from Queens College in New York, where he received his Masters in composition. He has written several orchestral, chamber, vocal and solo works and has received numerous commissions from performers and organizations, in addition to receiving grants and awards from The American Music Center, Meet the Composer, and NYSCA. Recordings of his works by Five O' Clock Piano Duo, Nicola Mazzanti, Greg Giannascoli, Guido Arbonelli, Tetraktis and Ivano Ascari are available on various labels. His music has been choreographed in Italy and the U.S. by such groups as The Ailey School of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and he also wrote music for the award winning documentary Where Did Forever Go.

Saverio Mercadante (1795 / Altamura - 1870 / Naples) studied flute, violin and composition at the conservatory in Naples where Rossini was said to tell the director, "My compliments Maestro - your young pupil ... begins where we finish". Appointed conductor of the college orchestra in 1817, he composed several symphonies and concertos, including six for the flutE. Rossini's encouragement inspired him to compose operas, and his second, Violenza e Constanza, was quite successful. He left Italy to work in Vienna, Madrid, Cadiz, and Lisbon, but returned in 1831. Rossini invited him to Paris in 1836 where he composed I Briganti for the four most well-known singers of the day, who worked closely with Bellini. Hearing the operas of Meyerbeer and Halévy left a profound impression, and led him to reform his style. Paying more attention to dramatic elements, and less to vocal virtuosity, he presaged Verdi and eclipsed Donizetti. He would write another 27 operas after his previous 29, which were quite successful, some receiving more performances than Verdi's early operas. He became Director of the Naples conservatory for the last thirty years of his life writing many more instrumental works than his contemporaries, due to his interest in orchestration.

Ottorino Respighi, (Bologna, 1879 - Rome, 1936) Son of a music teacher who first taught him piano and violin, he continued studying violin, viola and composition at the local conservatory with the prominent Italian instrumental 19th century composer Giuseppe Martucci (1856-1909). In 1900, he went to Russia as first violist in the orchestra of the Russian Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg during its season of Italian opera; where he studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and also studied with Max Bruch (1902) in Berlin. Until 1908 he was the first violin of the Mugellini Quintet, before turning his attention entirely to composition. He settled in Rome in 1913 becoming a composition teacher at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory and in 1919 married a former pupil, singer Elsa Olivieri-Sangiacomo, also a composer. An enthusiast for Italian music of the 16th-18th centuries, using them as source material in many of his compositions, he also published editions of music by Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Vivaldi and Benedetto Marcello. He died in his Roman villa, appropriately named "I Pini" after one of his best-known works.

The Sylvan Winds has performed throughout the United States and abroad. The ensemble has established a reputation as one of the city's most versatile chamber music ensembles and has received many honors, including an invitation to perform at the New York Governor's Arts Awards. Dedicated to exploring the entire body of literature for wind instruments, the ensemble has consistently earned audience and critical acclaim.