Renewal
A Note from Music Director Candidate Daniel Black
“I hope everyone will come to the program ready for some great music. I wanted to start somewhere dark and progress to somewhere more positive and upbeat. Some pieces are very familiar and some are less so, but it's all wonderful. Not only is Dwight Parry a great musician, but he commissioned [Oboe Concerto “Les Belles Heures”]. It was literally written for him. I am so pleased to work with him and bring this music to Great Falls."
What's interesting about this concert:
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The Manfred Overture is part of Schumann’s incidental music for Lord Byron’s dramatic poem Manfred. Byron’s story is a dark, Gothic tale about a tormented nobleman seeking release from guilt and supernatural forces. Schumann, who admired Byron’s emotional intensity, poured that spirit of restless torment, fatalism, and grandeur into the overture.
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Amanda Todd was a Canadian teenager whose tragic story of cyberbullying and suicide in 2012 drew worldwide attention. She had posted a YouTube video using cue cards to silently share her experience of online harassment and depression before taking her own life. Morlock’s composition My Name is Amanda Todd is both a memorial and a call for compassion, engaging directly with issues of mental health, vulnerability, and the dangers of online abuse.
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Les Belle Heures isn’t just an abstract concerto—it’s a poetic journey through the phases of the day, filled with atmosphere, beauty, and celebration. Audiences walk away not only impressed by the virtuosity, but also moved by the emotional arc.
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Unlike his darker and more dramatic Seventh Symphony, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 is sunny, lyrical, and pastoral. It’s often described as reflecting the beauty of the Bohemian countryside, with birdlike flute calls, rustic dances, and warm, flowing melodies. Many hear it as Dvořák’s most optimistic symphony.
Concert Details
DATE & TIME
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Saturday, May 9 2025 7:30pm
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DURATION
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1 hour, 41 minutes
(includes 20-min. intermission)
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Concerts Should Be Fun
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Bring wine and desserts to your seat
The free pre-concert talk begins at 6:30 in the theater
Clap when you hear something you like
Phones on and in silent mode allowed
The Program
Renewal
Guest Artist
DWIGHT PARRY
OBOE
Dwight Parry is the principal oboist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Professor of Oboe at Bowling Green State University and Adjunct Faculty at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Mr. Parry is a versatile and passionate soloist, chamber musician and advocate for new music, performing and teaching around the world.
SEASON SPONSORED BY
CONCERT SPONSORS
Daniel Black and this concert are both generously sponsored by
John Greenberger and Michael Kennedy
All music director candidates are also sponsored by
City Motor Company
The Gibson Hotel
Rib & Chop House – Great Falls
What You'll Hear
Daniel and this concert are both generously sponsored by
John Greenberger and Michael Kennedy
Symphony No. 8 (3rd movement) appears in the TV series True Blood and the final movement (4th) was featured in the 2019 film Maleficent: Mistress of Evil!
About the Music
PROGRAM NOTES BY DANIEL BLACK
Robert Schumann was a central figure in the 19th century European music scene, thanks not only to his prolific composition, but to his influence as a music critic. Although his reputation as a composer rests primarily on his huge output of art song and piano works, he also composed several notable orchestral pieces, including this overture. The dramatic poem Manfred, written in 1816, was Lord Byron’s answer to Goethe’s Faust, an intense, brooding psychological drama with supernatural elements in which the titular character is tormented by guilt for unspecified transgressions against his former lover, Astarte. Manfred seeks neither punishment nor redemption for these transgressions, only the grim peace of death. Schumann, whose own mental health was rather precarious and who would attempt suicide himself in 1854, felt a very strong kinship with this figure,
and composed in 1852 an overture and a set of fifteen movements for a melodramatic (i.e. drama accompanied by music) performance of Byron’s poem. This overture has remained in the standard orchestra repertoire ever since.
Set in the unusual key of E-flat minor, the overture follows traditional sonata-allegro form, that is, it has a slow introduction, followed by two contrasting principal themes which are developed throughout the work.
Manfred Overture
Op. 115
1852
Robert Schumann
1810 - 1856
13 MINUTES
These represent the tormented Manfred and his more gentle reflections on the lost Astarte. The first theme perfectly captures the turbulence of the protagonist’s psychological torment. The second theme is a vision of beauty and lost love, a brief moment of respite before the music plunges once more into the dark abyss. Despite not being noted for his orchestrational skill, Schumann’s use of the darker color palette of strings and low brass, along with his choice of key perfectly express the brooding inner turmoil of Byron’s flawed hero.
Until her untimely death in 2023, Jocelyn Morlock was one of the brightest stars in Canadian contemporary music, combining a magnificent sense for orchestral color and a gift for expressive melody with a fondness for nature and, at times, a willingness to peer into the more emotional and tragic aspects of modern life.
Perhaps her most deeply-felt orchestral work, My Name is Amanda Todd was inspired by the true-life story of fifteen-year-old Amanda Todd, who was mercilessly harassed and bullied online. Todd would bravely tell the story of her distress in a series of videos released on social media before tragically
succumbing to depression and taking her own life- one of the first high-profile victims of a distinctly 21st -century form of cruelty.
Morlock’s moving musical tribute goes beyond a tragic recounting of this sad tale. Using her mastery of orchestration, she vividly portrays how the accumulation of small wounds inflicted by the relentless online commentary eventually proved too
much to bear. But she also provides a counter-point.
My Name is Amanda Todd
2018
Jocelyn Morlock
1969 – 2023
11 MINUTES
The second half of the composition poses the question: what if all those hateful online comments (which have become so familiar to us all in the Internet Age) were transformed to positivity instead? What would be the cumulative effect of thousands of small acts of kindness? And thus the music is transformed, Amanda Todd’s story serving not just as a eulogy, but a powerful lesson in the power of compassion- a vision for a better future.
French composer Guillaume Connesson is one of the world’s leading orchestral composers, having served as composer-in-residence with many of Europe’s top orchestras. His musical style is a modern continuation of the tradition of Debussy and Ravel, marked by tuneful melodies, understated elegance and a superb mastery of orchestral timbre. The oboe concerto was commissioned by Dwight Parry and the Cincinnati Symphony, and received its world premiere with
that orchestra in 2022.
Of the concerto, Connesson wrote: Conceived in three movements, this concerto for oboe evokes three "poetic phases" of the day: L’heure bleue, that period between day and night when the sky fills up with a darker blue than the earlier sky blue. It is during the first instants of l’heure bleue that all the birds start to sing, and in summer the fragrance of the flowers becomes more intense. L’heure exquise is the moment of “a vast and tender appeasement” as Verlaine writes in the poem that I quote in the epigraph of this slowmovement. L’heure fugitive is the time of pleasures and love, the “carpe diem” of Horace, with these verses of Lamartine as an epigraph: “So, let us love, so, love! From the fleeting hour let us hasten and enjoy it!”
Oboe Concerto "Les Belle Heures"
2022
Guillaume Connesson
b. 1970
FEATURING GUEST ARTIST
OBOE
I. L’heure bleue (The Blue Hour)
II. L’heure exquise (The Exquisite Hour)
III. L’heure fugitive (The Fleeting Hour)
20 MINUTES
Antonín Dvořák was something of a late-bloomer as composers go. Although he scratched out a living as a violist, organist, and music teacher, it wasn’t until his mid-30s that he began to gain notice as a composer, thanks in large part to the efforts of Johannes Brahms, who helped his works to be published and disseminated. The latter half of Dvořák’s career, however, was prolific and successful, as he produced a stream of some of the most loved and widely- performed pieces in the repertoire, including his 9th Symphony (“New World”), the
Cello Concerto, the Slavonic Dances, the “American Quartet” and many others.
With so many excellent later works to choose from, Dvořák’s 8th Symphony of 1889 perhaps is a victim of the composer’s success, living somewhat in the
shadow, as it were, of the 9th.
Musically-speaking, this symphony is every bit as powerful and creative as the 9th. Dvořák’s music showcases his gift for singable, memorable melodies, lush orchestration (particularly for strings), and a naturalness of form. He was not an innovator, certainly not in the sense that his contemporaries Wagner or Richard Strauss would be considered. And yet, his music is memorable, expressive, and
perfectly proportioned. Not a single note seems out of place.
The full effect of the 8th Symphony can be summarized in one word: joy! Despite the occasional pensive episode detouring into the minor mode, each shadow in the music is quickly dispersed by outbursts of bright, optimistic music, culminating at last in a raucous and uplifting finale.
Symphony No. 8 in G Major
Op. 88
1889
Antonín Dvořák
1841 – 1904
37 MINUTES
The 8th Symphony outwardly follows the typical symphonic form (i.e. four separate movements, the inner movements including a scherzo and a slow movement, the outer movements more expansive.) According to convention a traditional symphony should open with a movement in sonata-allegro form, but although the first movement is technically thus, Dvořák also imposes a binary sort of structure over the top, an alternation between minor and major that leaves the listener guessing as to where the music is heading.
The second slow movement has a stately grace and a touch of sadness, while the third is a perfectly proportioned scherzo, featuring some of Dvořák’s loveliest, most bucolic melodies.
The finale is another departure from expectations. Instead of the usual sonata-allegro form, we have essentially a theme and variations, with a strong folk character. The composer continues to keep us guessing about the twists and turns until the final joyful explosion.