Trung Nguyen
Professor Anderson
Music 13
March 28, 2014
Word count: 2057 words.
Attachment:
1. One concert ticket
2. One photocopy of the page of the program that lists the pieces performed
Note: The program’s description of the piece is not available in this concert.
CONCERT REPORT
I. General information
1. The composer
Tchaikovsky (May 7, 1840 - November 6, 1893) was born in Votkinsk, Russia. He was a
Russia composer of the Romantic Era. He composed in most genres of Romantic Era including songs, ballets, overtures, string quartets, chamber music, instrumental, operas, and symphonies.
The ballet Swan Lake, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, The Sleeping Beauty and
The Nutcracker, his last three numbered symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin are his most well-known works.
2. Title of the piece
Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36 includes 4 movements:
1. Andante sostenuto
2. Andantino in modo di canzona
3. Scherzo. Pizzicato ostinato
4. Finale. Allegro con fuoco
3. The conductor
The conductor was Sey Ahn. She was born in 1986 in Seoul, Korea. She finished her master’s degree in conducting in 2012 at the Thornton School of Music of The University of
Southern California.
4. The orchestra
Diamond Bar High School Symphony Orchestra includes 1 piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 4 clarinets, 5 bassoons, 4 French horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 1 tuba, 2 harp, 4 percussion, and strings. 1
II. The way the orchestra played
All of the players sat on a chair when they performed. The string players produced the sound through their string instruments by dragging a bow against the strings. Sometimes, they made playful, as well as unique, sounds by plucking the strings. Accompanying with bowing or plucking the strings, they used their left fingers pressing upon specific places on the strings so that they were able to change the pitches. Using slightly different bowing and plucking skills, woodwind instrument players placed their fingers of both hand in order to open or close those holes, so they could alter the pitches. Then, woodwind instrument players blew through the instruments to produce sound. Brass instrument players also blew into the mouthpiece to create sound. However, they did not have many holes like woodwinds to change pitches. The players used their mouth technique and a slide to raise or lower the pitch of the note being played.
Percussion players produced sound in several ways depending on which kinds of percussion instruments were played. They hit drums with sticks, or hit two disks against each other to produce sound.
III. The way the symphony sound
1. The first movement - Andante sostenuto
The first movement was the longest movement in the whole piece. It lasted nearly 20 minutes. The French horns’ sound started the first movement with fast tempo and loud dynamics.
After that, the music became even louder when the woodwinds joined the piece, and then the string followed. Through this movement, I realized the perfect combination of the dynamics and the tempo. The combination was very appealing and dominated in most of the first movement.
When the tempo was loud, the dynamics would be fast; conversely, when the tempo was soft, the dynamics would be slow. Moreover, Tchaikovsky employed the crescendos and the decrescendos to move the music along with the whole movement. These were the important elements in this movement. I often heard the loud-fast sounds; the music changed gradually to a new melody with the soft-slow sounds, and after that the loud-fast one came back. That pattern repeated many times and influenced most of the movement. The orchestra made the dynamics louder by getting more players playing as well as having them play louder. I found that a few minutes after the movement started with the brass, the woodwind participated in, and then the string. Tchaikovsky also made great shifts between loud and soft dynamics through the employment of the French horn in this movement. Not only do dynamics and tempo
