Olympia Chamber Orchestra Concert “…Of Dance!”

Olympia’s got talent! Although this Olympia Chamber Orchestra (OCO) concert emphasizes dance music, every year OCO hosts the Olympia Music Teachers Association’s amazing piano competition winners. This year Gabriel Ong performs the first movement of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto and Michael Zhao the third movement, Rondo, of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto. Both study with Brooke Beecher.
Maestro Nickolas Carlson conducted the opera Les Indes Galantes (The Amorous Indies) by Jean-Phillipe Rameau (1683-1764) during graduate school at Wichita State University. Even if you don’t think you would like anything from a French Baroque opera, these dances are tuneful, rhythmically catchy and Nickolas has infused rehearsals with playful energy. There are four separate plots demonstrating Love vs. War in the Ottoman Empire, Peru, Persia, and North America. If you go online, you’ll find fanciful performances of the dances.
Carl Maria von Weber’s (1786-1826) music is featured in the Invitation to the Dance and Symphony No. 1 in C, opus 19. Strauss” Invitation to the Dance” is a sparkling waltz. This piece inspired composers to move away from writing simple country dances and compose passionate and expressive dance music like Johann Strauss’s waltzes. The Waltz King is represented on this concert with another dance form in Thunder and Lightning Polka.

Weber was one of the first composers of the Romantic period. Maestro Carlson will acquaint you with Symphony No. 1 in C Op. 19 and its classical elegance and charm. When Weber composed it, he was in his twenties and Beethoven had already written his monumental 3rd symphony, but Weber maintained a traditional classical style.

Collen Ferris won a chance to conduct a work of her choice at an OCO fundraiser, and she is skillfully conducting Brahms Fifth Hungarian Dance.