Fairfax Symphony Presents a Night of Romance and Storytelling Saturday

By the Arts Council of Fairfax County

A night of romance and storytelling before the chaos of the holidays hits sounds like a great idea—and it's just what the Fairfax Symphony has in store this Saturday night at the George Mason University Center for the Arts.

The show includes a special presentation of pieces by Sergei Rachmaninov and Edvard Grieg, as well as the D.C. and Virginia premiere of American composer Larry Alan Smith's Saxophone Concerto.

Tickets for the special event, which begins at 8 p.m., can be purchased online.

Rachmaninov is now admired—indeed beloved —as a creator of moodily romantic melodies, although at one time there was a perceived need to apologize for the beauty of those melodies.

Rachmaninov summed up his life as a composer shortly before his death in 1943: "In my own compositions, no conscious effort has been made to be original, or Romantic, or Nationalistic... I write down the music I hear within me. I am a Russian composer, and the land of my birth has influenced my temperament and outlook... I have been strongly influenced by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, but I have never, to the best of my knowledge, imitated anyone. What I try to do when writing down my music is to make it say simply that which is in my heart. If there is love there, or bitterness, or sadness, or religion, these moods become part of my music, and it becomes either beautiful or bitter or sad or religious."

Rachmaninov was often the object of critics' scorn for being stylistically rooted in the 19th Century. At the end of his life, however, with the Symphonic Dances, Rachmaninoff combined a modernist rhythmic element with his own penchant for a great melody.

The piece was premiered in 1941 by its dedicatee, Eugene Ormandy, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The initial reception was lukewarm but it has since become a critical and audience favorite amongst the composer's compositions, and the score is known as being music for a virtuoso orchestra.

This was the last music Rachmaninov ever wrote. Two years later, and a month after becoming an American citizen, he died a few days short of his 70th birthday. It is tempting to hear the composer's knowledge of his imminent demise in this piece. It is also easy to hear his continued joy in, and exploration of, the possibilities available to him, and to his audiences who continue to revel in his gorgeous and transporting melodies.

Edvard Grieg, Norway's greatest composer, was born in 1843 and, like Rachmaninov, was a renowned and remarkable pianist. Grieg painted the people, the scenery, and the moods of Norway with his music. In the dramatic and continually popular Peer Gynt Suites, Grieg captured the rising of the sun, the lamenting of a death, and, in "The Hall of the Mountain King," the imagery of a chase scene. 

The melodies we readily recognize today made him famous in his own time—as Grieg and his wife, Nina, strolled through the streets of Bergen, children would follow after, whistling these tunes, in tribute to the great composer. 

It seems likely they will continue to be whistled and hummed—and played by orchestras worldwide.

The concert opens with the irresistible Peer Gynt by Edward Grieg, and concludes with Rachmaninov’s popular but always entrancing Symphonic Dances, which also prominently features the sensuous sounds of the saxophone. 

“The Symphonic Dances is a particular personal favorite of mine,” said Fairfax Symphony Maestro Christopher Zimmerman. “Rachmaninov takes us on a powerful, utterly transfixing musical journey; one that takes all his musical genius and a lifetime to express.”