Contact: Mark Miller (908-561-5140)
Website: www.plainfieldsymphony.org
The Plainfield Symphony March 15, 2025, 7 PM concert will now feature internationally acclaimed American Operatic Soprano Amy Shoremount-Obra. Maestro Charles Prince will lead the ensemble in the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss and Symphony No. 5 by Jean Sibelius.
Richard Strauss (1864-1949) composed Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) for Soprano and Orchestra in 1948, when he was 84 years old. The piece was posthumously published. Strauss set the text to music of a poem "Im Abendrot" (In the Glow of Evening) by Joseph von Eichendorff, which had a special meaning for him as well as three poems by Hermann Hesse – "Frühling" (Spring), "September", and "Beim Schlafengehen” (Going to Sleep). They all treat the subject of death in a calm manner of acceptance of the natural transformation of the soul. With “Im Abendrot,” he concludes the work with the utterance of the word “death” in a moment where the solo horn quotes the theme from Strauss’s early tone poem, Death and Transfiguration. Each song features exquisite word painting and together, they represent some of the most beautiful music that was ever written.
Stepping in as soloist for the Strauss songs in place of the indisposed Othalie Graham will be Operatic Soprano Amy Shoremount-Obra. “Top Prize Winner of the 2018 Gerda Lissner Foundation International Vocal Competition Wagner Division, Soprano Amy Shoremount-Obra has garnered major attention for her work on the operatic and concert stage.” She made her much-anticipated Metropolitan Opera Debut in October 2014 as “First Lady” in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Ms. Shoremount-Obra has sung title operatic roles throughout the United States including Puccini’s “Turandot,” Strauss’s “Salome”, “Leonore” in Beethoven’s Fidelio, and Puccini’s “Tosca,” to name but a few. Ms. Shoremount-Obra has also concertized internationally. She is a 2004 New York Regional Winner and National Semi-Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and is the recipient of numerous other awards. A native of New Jersey, she holds degrees from Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School. In August 2017, Ms. Shoremount-Obra was appointed Adjunct Assistant Professor of Voice at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College.
Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1965-1957) completed revisions to his three movement Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82 in 1919. Sibelius was so beloved in his home country of Finland that the government declared his birthday a national holiday and commissioned him to write his Fifth Symphony to honor it. It is his most important largescale work from World War 1 era. He often drew inspiration from nature and the Finnish landscape. The “Swan Hymn” theme in the last movement evokes the graceful beating of swans’ wings, reminiscent of an inspirational moment of viewing a group of 16 swans. The Fifth is one of Sibelius’s most accessible works expressing an optimistic and heroic spirit.
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