LUCO Continuo
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volume three | issue 2 - February 2023
Message from the Maestro
This Saturday, February 11, we are thrilled to present LUCO’s next performance of the season: Astrology. This program brings the some of the most dramatic music in the symphonic repertory to the stage. Beethoven’s Overture to Coriolan was originally conceived as an overture to a play. Beethoven rarely wrote instrumental music to describe a dramatic plot. The music can be pompous and furious. Other times it is pleading and sorrowful. Beethoven is telling this tragic story without words.
The second piece is an audience favorite, The Planets. Gustav Holst digs deep into his artistic imagination to create mini tone poems depicting each planet’s namesake. Requiring a gigantic force of instruments, each movement of the suite is a musical characterization of the supposed astrological character - Mars (Bringer of War), Venus (Bringer of Peace), Mercury (the Winged Messenger), Jupiter (Bringer of Jollity), Saturn (Bringer of Old Age), Uranus (The Magician), and Neptune (The Mystic). Each movement brings its own colors, harmonies, rhythms, and surprises to the ear. In Neptune, we will be joined by members of the Wellspring Ensemble as they sing their eerie distant song.
As always, we are excited to have you along for our live performances. Also, we hope you will join us for March 18 for Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 and May 4 for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
The second piece is an audience favorite, The Planets. Gustav Holst digs deep into his artistic imagination to create mini tone poems depicting each planet’s namesake. Requiring a gigantic force of instruments, each movement of the suite is a musical characterization of the supposed astrological character - Mars (Bringer of War), Venus (Bringer of Peace), Mercury (the Winged Messenger), Jupiter (Bringer of Jollity), Saturn (Bringer of Old Age), Uranus (The Magician), and Neptune (The Mystic). Each movement brings its own colors, harmonies, rhythms, and surprises to the ear. In Neptune, we will be joined by members of the Wellspring Ensemble as they sing their eerie distant song.
As always, we are excited to have you along for our live performances. Also, we hope you will join us for March 18 for Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 and May 4 for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
Nikolas Caoile, Music Director
