The Prince George Symphony Orchestra is the ultimate roots music band. They dig into the foundation sounds that make up each and all forms of modern music. When they say they're putting on folk music concert, they mean it for deeper real than even the Woodstock organizers.
The PGSO's version of folk music isn't Ian & Sylvia or early Leonard Cohen. They are reaching into the 1960s, true enough, where they found Hungarian composer Zoltn Kodly (born 1882, died 1967) but their long arm also goes all the way back to the 1860s where they found Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (born 1841, died 1904) and French composer Charles-Franois Gounod (born 1818, died 1893).
PGSO music director Michael Hall built Saturday's concert under the title Folk Traditions and centred it on Dvorak's famous New World Symphony. He drew that conclusion because the piece was specifically written to be an expression of American folk music even though that term wasn't in use yet and he was from Central Europe.
"Dvorak was invited to America to be part of a new music school that was starting up in New York," Hall explained. "The school's intent was to point the way to a new all-American classical music sound. Dvorak had very successfully mined the musical traditions of his home region (Moravia, Bohemia) and turned that into a popular brand of music, so it was hoped he could put his skills to the same use in America. He was there for a couple of years working on this, and the New World Symphony was written from those studies. He went to the extent of looking at Aboriginal music traditions and African-American songs dating back to the days of slavery.
"I'm not sure how much of that actually ended up in his thinking, when he composed New World, but you can certainly detect a distinctly American sound in this piece."
Since the meshing of old Czech traditions and emerging American effects were already a dominant theme in the Dvorak piece, Hall decided to make that the theme of the night.
"The Kodly piece is a short selection from a larger work of his, the intermezzo, and it has distinctive rhythms and harmonic components to it that really evoke his Hungarian heritage," Hall said.
"The Gounod piece is absolutely, very specifically French in its melodic content, its colours," he added. "It is only for wind instruments, so that's interesting. Only nine players perform this piece. We don't have a specific feature soloist, for this concert, but we do have these nine players stepping forward into a sort of ensemble spotlight. It's a very nice experience, a little appetizer for the night."
Hall likened the concoction of the three pieces to be like creating a meal. It comes together by placing complementary ingredients onto the same plate, with some presentation effects to make it all cohesive. These three works of music, he said, have their differences but together make a nourishing time for the audience and musicians alike.
The PGSO presents Folk Traditions tonight at 7:30 at Vanier Hall. Tickets are available online from the Central Interior Tickets website or at the door.
