Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, and a Silver Sixpence in Her Shoe!
The Strathcona Symphony Orchestra has something to catch your fancy and something for everyone to enjoy. The spring concert features a program of composers old and new, famous and not so well known.
For “Something Old,” the SSO has chosen an old favourite that Felix Mendelssohn wrote in 1842 as incidental music for Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Wedding March is well known and much loved.
The “Something New” number is a delightful piece called Soliloquy, written within the last decade by a Californian high school teacher, Brendan McBrien, for a friend. It has a lovely lush melancholy sweetness.
For “Something Borrowed,” the orchestra will perform a gem of a piece with the intriguing title Tahiti Trot. The original theme, Tea for Two, was composed by Vincent Youmans for the stage show No, No, Nanette in 1925. A couple of years later Nicola Malko, a conductor, and his friend, Dmitri Shostakovich, the Russian composer, listened to the tune on a gramophone record. Malko bet Shostakovich 100 roubles that he could not make an orchestral arrangement of it for orchestra from memory in just an hour. He did and won the bet. Later he incorporated this catchy arrangement into the suite of music he wrote for his ballet The Golden Age.
The Something Blue item will be a performance of Leroy Anderson’s Blue Tango. It was written in 1951 and was the first orchestral recording to sell one million copies.
The Strathcona Symphony Orchestra will play at the Native Sons Hall on Cliffe Avenue in Courtenay, Saturday, May 28 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, May 29 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 and may be purchased at the door, or from Blue Heron Books in Comox and Laughing Oyster Books in Courtenay.