The Villages Philharmonic Orchestra

March 2023 Newsletter

Welcome to our March newsletter. Every month we'll share exciting news about upcoming concerts, sensational featured events with NEW interesting, useful information about the VPO and our talented guest Artists.

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Classical Concert Series

TUESDAY, MARCH 21st, 2023 at 7:00pm

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A Message from Maestro Pasquale Valerio

Dear friends and patrons,

In this concert we will perform works by an extraordinary composer who left an enduring mark of genius. In this concert, we will present the Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra by Sergei Rachmaninov (born 150 years ago). We are pleased to welcome internationally renowned pianist Antonio Pompa Baldi to our stage.

I would like to thank the Steinway Gallery Tampa for their generosity in supporting this event and providing the Steinway Grand Piano D model for the concert, as well as for their support of the 88 Key Steinway Project fundraising campaign.

Thanks for your support.

Musically Yours

Pasquale Valerio

Antonio Pompa-Baldi - Pianist

Born and raised in Foggia, Italy, Antonio Pompa-Baldi won the Cleveland

International Piano Competition in 1999 and embarked on a career that continues

to extend across five continents. A top prize winner at the 1998 Marguerite Long-

Jacques Thibaud Competition of Paris, Pompa-Baldi also won a silver medal at the

2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Pompa-Baldi appears at the world’s major concert venues including New York’s

Carnegie Hall, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Milan’s Sala Verdi, Boston’s Symphony

Hall, Shanghai’s Grand Theatre and Paris’ Salle Pleyel, to name a few.

He has collaborated with leading conductors including Hans Graf, James Conlon,

Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Theodore Kuchar, Benjamin Zander, Louis Lane and Keith

Lockhart. He has performed with ensembles and colleagues such as the Takács

String Quartet, trumpeter Alison Balsom, cellist Sharon Robinson, Juilliard Quartet

violinist Areta Zhulla, and principals of The Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony,

and New York Philharmonic, among others.

With a concerto repertoire including more than 60 works, Pompa-Baldi has

performed cycles of all the Rachmaninoff piano concertos, the five Beethoven

piano concertos and both Brahms piano concertos, among many other mainstream

works.

He also loves performing new scores, and lesser known ones, from premiering

piano concertos by Italian composers Roberto Piana and Luca Moscardi, to

resurrecting the early A minor Respighi Piano Concerto, the Howard Ferguson

Concerto and the Cecile Chaminade Konzertstück, to name a few.

Pompa-Baldi has played recitals in most major venues over the world, attaining the

same balance between featuring beloved works from the standard repertoire, and

showcasing new or unjustly neglected masterpieces. Among recent stops on his

tours, he performed in Vienna, Austria; Malaga, Spain; Nancy, France; New York;

Cape Town, South Africa; Husum Festival, Germany; Duszniki Chopin Festival,

Poland. Just before the pandemic, he toured China, playing in Beijing, Wuhan,

Nanjing, Dalian, Guangzhou, as well as the Lang Lang festivals in Shenzhen and

Hangzhou.

Mr. Pompa-Baldi has recorded over 30 CDs to date, for various labels including

Centaur Records, Steinway, Brilliant Classics, Harmonia Mundi, TwoPianists, and

Azica. Among them, the complete piano and chamber music works of Grieg, the

Josef Rheinberger Piano Sonatas, the complete Hummel Piano Sonatas, and CDs

dedicated to Brahms, Schumann, Liszt, Respighi, and Rachmaninoff.

For the Steinway label, Pompa-Baldi recorded a disc of songs by Francis Poulenc

and Edith Piaf, arranged for solo piano, to commemorate the 50th year of the

passing of both French musical icons, as well as a CD titled “Napoli”, which

features new piano versions of famous Neapolitan songs.

His latest releases feature Concertos for Violin, Piano and Orchestra by

Mendelssohn, Haydn, and Hummel, as well as a CD of newly composed Opera

Fantasies on La Bohème and Carmen, by Roberto Piana.

The Steinway label also recently released Pompa-Baldi’s piano transcription of the

Respighi B minor Violin Sonata, The score has been published by the Japanese

publishing house Muse Press.

Antonio Pompa-Baldi is a Steinway Artist since 2003.

He is often invited to judge international piano competitions such as the Cleveland,

Hilton Head, E-Competition (Minneapolis), BNDES Rio de Janeiro, and Edward

Grieg (Bergen), among many others. He serves as president of the jury and artistic

advisor for the San Jose International Piano Competition since 2006.

Pompa-Baldi is on faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music as Artist-in-

Residence and Distinguished Professor of Piano.

His students have been prizewinners in important competitions such as Marguerite

Long, Hilton Head, Isang Yun, and Gina Bachauer. He is regularly invited to teach

masterclasses in countless universities, music schools, and festivals in the US and

all over the world. He holds honorary professorships from the Beijing, Shanghai

and Shenyang Conservatories, as well as several other institutions.

From 2009 to 2012, Pompa-Baldi lead the Manuel Rueda program in Santo

Domingo, working with with Fundación por la Musica, mentoring young

Dominican pianists.

In 2015, Pompa-Baldi founded the Todi International Music Masters festival, of

which he is artistic director and faculty member. This summer festival takes

place every August in the beautiful Italian town of Todi. It features 15 concerts in 15 days, masterclasses with internationally renowned faculty members, and

students from all over the world.

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2

The Second Piano Concerto of Sergei Rachmaninoff is one of the most recognizable, beloved pieces in the repertoire. It unfolds in the most natural, almost inevitable manner, featuring an enormous wealth of beautiful melodies and inspired moments. It is hard to believe it, but Rachmaninoff composed it while he was probably at his lowest, in the grip of a deep depression. His First Symphony, which premiered in 1897, had been a total fiasco. Rachmaninoff’s self-esteem was crushed, and he could not write anything for three years. During this time, he mainly performed as a pianist and conductor, and it wasn’t until he sought the help of Dr. Nikolai Dahl, in January of 1900, that he overcame this creative block. Dr. Dahl specialized in neurology, psychiatry, and psychology. Rachmaninoff

saw him daily for more than three months and was treated through hypnosis and support therapy. The results were spectacular. Not only did Rachmaninoff resume composing, but he produced right away one of his most enduring, most perfect masterpieces: the Second Piano Concerto. He acknowledged the importance of Dr. Dahl by dedicating the Concerto to him.

Right from the very beginning, we hear bell-like sounds, reminiscent of the Russian Orthodox Churches, and the services he attended during his childhood. The main theme of the first movement is also likely influenced by Russian Orthodox chants.

The Concerto demands a lot from the soloist, also due to the very large handspan Rachmaninoff possessed, which he fully used in his music. However, the virtuosic challenges are never self serving. In fact, adjectives best describing this Concerto are: deep, passionate, romantic, nostalgic, and lyrical.

Beethoven's 5th symphony

Beethoven's fifth symphony is the iconic work of classical music. It pervades the whole world of symbols and imagery of musical art as an evocation of a welter of ideas. In a sad way it is almost impossible to escape all of these associations extrinsic to the work itself and to focus only on Beethoven's composition. But distancing one's self from it all and listening to the symphony as if for the first time can be a joy-as this writer has found, sitting in the best seat in the house (in the back of the orchestra).

By the time that Beethoven had composed this work he was a well-respected composer in Vienna, but certainly not hailed as a genius. The first three symphonies, three piano concertos, piano sonatas, string quartets -all had bolstered his growing reputation before he finished this symphony. It took him rather a long time, almost four years, as he interrupted his work frequently to produce some significant compositions: The Razumovsky string quartets, the fourth symphony and fourth piano concerto, and the first version of his only opera, Fidelio.

Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture

In May 1791, Emanuel Schickaneder, impressario and manager of the Theater- auf-der-Wieden in Vienna, approached Mozart with a proposal to collaborate on a new opera in the German singspiel style called the Magic Flute. It was to be a comic musical with spoken dialogue based on an oriental fairy tale. Schickaneder did not offer Mozart any commission, but promised that he would get a share of the profits from all performances after the première - a promise that was never kept despite the huge success of the opera.

Most of the composition was completed by July, but Mozart was then busy writing two commissioned works: the opera "La Clemenza di Tito" and the infamous "Requiem Mass", and so the score was not completely finished until 28th September 1791, just two days before the opening night. The première was not an outstanding success. However the opera's reputation grew over the next few weeks, and by the end of October Mozart was delighted by the enthusiastic responses of the audiences, and the fulsome praise of distinguished musicians such as Antonio Salieri. However, his health was failing fast, and nine weeks after the first performance he died of kidney failure.

The Overture to The Magic Flute contrasts the solemn music associated in

the opera with the priesthood led by Sarastro, with the flighty and energetic music associated with his nemesis the Queen of the Night. Like many of his late compositions it is very concise in its use of melodic ideas, and quite extraordinary in its inventiveness. It is in sonata form with the slow introduction returning between the exposition and development. The allegro makes extensive use of counterpoint. It progresses with an infectious energy towards an exhilarating conclusion. A perfect introduction to the work which was to become Mozart's most successful, and perhaps most influential, opera.

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