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One might not expect a concert titled Lullaby of the Snow to be one that warmly ushers in spring, but that’s precisely what the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra is promising its audiences this week.
Guest conductor David Bui will lead the orchestra in two performances of the concert at the Crescent Arts Centre in Osborne Village, which will include pieces by English, Spanish and local repertoire.
The centerpiece of Lullaby of the Snow is Sally Beamish’s "Saxophone Concerto no. 2", also known as "Under the Wing of the Rock". The soloist for this work is Winnipeg’s Allen Harrington, who can usual be found in the orchestra's wind section as the bassoonist.
This piece actually existed first as a viola concerto,” Harrington shared in an interview on Morning Light. “While she was composing the piece, she heard a performance of Branford Marsalis on saxophone, and that served as an inspiration for her while she was composing this viola concerto. A couple of years after she finished writing it, she created this saxophone version of it.”
The chilly element of Lullaby of the Snow comes from the other inspiration for Beamish’s saxophone concerto: the poem with which it shares its name by Scottish writer Alexander Carimichael.
“It’s essentially this story of this soldier in... the Battle of Glencoe in Scotland from the 1600’s,” Harrington says. “The soldier is dispatched to kill this child that they can hear crying, and the soldier comes across this mother singing a lullaby to the child, trying to get it to be quiet, I guess. The soldier realizes that he knows this song – his own mother had sung it to him. So he spares them, gives them some food and water, and goes back to his troops and kills an animal along the way to show blood on his sword.”
Given the bleak nature of the poem that inspired the saxophone concerto, it’s small wonder that the orchestra wants to strike a balance for the listener. That balance comes in the form of the other pieces that Bui will lead the orchestra through. When asked by the orchestra which pieces he would program alongside Beamish’s saxophone concerto, inspiration immediately struck: Benjamin Britten’s "Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge".
“This is a piece I did a few years ago at a festival in Finland,” shares Bui, adding that it’s a piece that the orchestra hasn’t played in Winnipeg in three decades.
“This piece has so many different characters and themes,” he continues. “We go to [a Vienna waltz], we have a funeral, we have a march, we have everything. So, I wanted a program that could highlight all the different characters and all the different strengths of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra.”
The orchestra will also share works by Astor Piazzolla and the late Jocelyn Morlock. Performances take place on March 13 at 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Crescent Arts Centre. More information can be found at the orchestra’s website.