Kalamazoo Philharmonia - "Throughline"

There is much instrumental music that tells no specific narrative story, and yet must still seem coherent to the listener.  Some of the greatest composers achieved this by taking the smallest components of their music – perhaps one short melody, or even just a few distinctive notes – and transforming them in brilliant ways over and over again, creating a fractal tapestry where even passages of great contrast share the same fundamental DNA. Three perfect examples of this compositional mastery are on display in this program.  Miloslav Kabeláč, a Czech composer of the mid-20th Century, lived under the stifling restrictions of Communism.  He sought refuge by looking at the stars, a divine cosmic order that put in perspective the hollow proclamations of self-important bureaucrats, and poured this inspiration into his evocatively named The Mystery of Time.  Johannes Brahms, ever in thrall to the past, looked to the stately St. Anthony Chorale of Joseph Haydn for his point of inspiration.  And American Composer Samuel Barber took the sprawling contrasts of a conventional four-movement symphonic form, and compressed them into a single unified utterance, suffused with his trademark lyricism.