MARIPOSA — In early August 1804, a revolution occurred. No bullets were fired, no one was injured – but the world was forever changed. The revolutionary was no political figure but a musician; the revolt occurred not on a battlefield but in a Viennese palace’s drawing room.
Beethoven’s third symphony in Eb, the “Eroica” was privately performed for the first time that day. The world’s most revered living composer, 72-year-old Franz Joseph Haydn was present. As the stunned Haydn said afterwards: “from this day forward, nothing will be the same.”
Haydn’s one-time student Ludwig van Beethoven had just stormed the bastions of music, kicked in the door of the “classical” period, overturned the apple cart of convention and literally: reinvented music. And now the revolution comes to Mariposa as the Mariposa Symphony Orchestra opens its 15th Season on October 22 at 7 p.m. at the Fiester Auditorium of Mariposa County High School with a performance of that very symphony.
Also on the program is Jan Václav Hugo Voříšek’s one and only (1821) symphony. Its composer was often called the “Czech Mozart” and Voříšek’s symphony demonstrates why. The work is a perfect counter to Beethoven’s “Eroica,” composed 17 years after Beethoven’s revolt as a charming, look backwards to Mozart, who had died in 1791. Voříšek greatly admired his friend Beethoven, but he idolized the long-dead Mozart and in this symphony, might have been trying to build a bridge to the past rather than try to tear one down.
It’ll be fascinating listening, no matter what. Fiery revolution and fond regression. Don’t miss it.
The MSO’s 15th Season Opening Concert will be held on Saturday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m. in the Fiester Auditorium, Mariposa County High School. Tickets are now available for secure online purchase at the Mariposa County Arts Council’s website: visit http://www.mariposaartscouncil.org or call 209.966.3155 for more information. The Mariposa Symphony Orchestra is a program of the Mariposa County Arts Council, Inc.
(Submitted by Les Marsden, Founding Music Director and Conductor, The Mariposa Symphony Orchestra)
