Stanford Philharmonia

For CA Festival, we are presenting Stanford alumnus and a very prominent composer of our time, William Bolcom (b. 1938) in "Celebration of New Music". Especially, we are honored to west-coast premiere the piece, Dedication (2022), by William Bolcom during our Stanford Philharmonia Fall Concert, conducted by Paul Phillips, as part of the CA Festival this year. Along with Bolcom, we have Mozart Symphony No.34 in C Major, K. 338 and Charles Griffes on our program, which Griffes’s piece, Poem for Flute and Orchestra, will be performed by Laura Futamura, a 2023 Concerto Competition Winner at Stanford University.

Dedication, a work for chamber orchestra by William Bolcom was written in 2021-2022 especially for the ROCO Chamber Orchestra. The commission was the result of a meeting between Alecia Lawyer and the composer at a Great American Songbook concert, hosted by Arthur and Shelley Gottschalk. Dedication is a concise but dramatic work. Its three-part form is determined by tempo and motif. The work begins with Intro: Moderato. After a very soft ostinato sounds from the depths of the orchestra, two melodies emerge: the first in the Piccolo and Eb Clarinet, the second in the English Horn and Bassoon. They are complemented by strings in close harmony and lyrical muted brass. This is followed by feroce! which engages the tutti ensemble in a cascade of brilliant fortissimo block harmonies. The next section, Allegro molto, is characterized by agile, virtuosic passage work and brash chords. Tempo I returns with familiar motifs wrapped in six sharps. Marked espressivo e cantabile, tutti strings provide an incandescent conclusion. Then soft string glissandi allow the music to fade back from wherever it came. Dedication is orchestrated by his former student Edmund Cionek.