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By Jacob Stockinger
This Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Firemen’s Park, the mostly amateur but critically acclaimed Middleton Community Orchestra (MCO) will give the second of its FREE four summer outdoors concerts.
Besides the fact that the day is Father’s Day holiday, weather predictions also call for a good chance of rain or even thunderstorms.
Updates on whether the concert will take place, be cancelled or postponed to a later date, can be found by checking the MCO’s website at 10 a.m.: https://middletoncommunityorchestra.org
Meanwhile, here are the programs, conductors and soloists for the remaining three concerts. All concerts take place in Firemen’s Park in Middleton close to Middleton High School:
CONCERT – SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. (revised program)
Sergei Pavlov (below), conductor and professor at Edgewood College
George Walker – “Lyric for Strings”
Ralph Vaughan Williams – “Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis” (heard in the YouTube video at the bottom)
Giacomo Puccini – Lauretta’s aria from “Gianni Schicchi”; Mimi’s aria in Act 3 and Musetta’s aria in Act 2 from “La Boheme” with soprano Yanzel Rivera (below).
Selections from the Pixar movie COCO (piano and strings)
CONCERT – SUNDAY, JULY 25, 11:30 – a.m.-1 p.m.
Chris Ramaekers (below), conductor and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky – “March Slav”
Carl Maria von Weber — Clarinet Concerto No. 2 with soloist and Madison Symphony Orchestra principal clarinetist JJ Koh (below)
Tchaikovsky — Symphony No. 2 “Little Russian”
CONCERT 4 – SUNDAY, AUG. 15, 11:30-1 p.m.
Sergei Pavlov, conductor
Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with soloist and UW-Madison graduate Thomas Kasdorf (below)
The Festival Choir of Madison (below) will perform the program “The Slavic Soul” this coming Saturday night, May 19, at 7:30 p.m. in the Atrium Auditorium at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive.
The Festival Choir will have guest conductor Nikoleta Popova for the event, who is coming from Spain to conduct a program comprised of songs either by Slavic composers or inspired by Slavic music. More about the conductor is below.
Several U.S. premieres are marked with an asterisk and there is one world premiere.
Bela Bartok (1881-1945) – Four Slovak Folk Songs (heard in the YouTube video at the bottom)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1908-1975) – Two Russian Folk Songs. With Anya Gubenkova, alto
Alexander Davidenko (1899–1934) – “At Ten Versts From the Capital”* with Ted Reinke, piano, and Dan Broner, organ
Vera Nasha (Our Faith)* Serbian Folk Song, arr. Yónatan Sánchez Santianes with James McKenzie, percussion
Szymon Godziemba-Trytek (1988) Agnus Dei (World Premiere) with Ted Reinke, organ
Georgy Sviridov (1915–1998) – “A Wondrous Birth”; “Balalaika”; and “Reveille.” With Anya Gubenkova, alto
Dobri Hristov (1875–1941) – “Rachenitsa”
Todor Popov (1921–2000) – “Stara Sa Maika” (The Old Mother)*
“Kalinka,” a Russian Folk Song arranged by Vadim Prokhorov
The guest conductor is Nikoleta Popova (below) of Bulgaria and Spain. She is a renowned specialist in Eastern European and Bulgarian music and has offered seminars and master classes all over the world.
Currently, Popova is Professor in Conducting at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Canarias in Las Palmas, Spain, where she is also music director of the conservatory orchestra and choirs. She has appeared as guest conductor in Austria, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the U.S., as well as her native Bulgaria.
Born in Dobrich, Bulgaria, Nikoleta Popova received her education as a conductor from the National Academy of Music in Sofia, Bulgaria, and from Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Graz. Among her teachers are Eric Whitacre, Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, Alex Schillings, Klaas Stok, Marco Antonio Da Silva Ramos, and others.
In 2011 Nikoleta Popova received her Ph.D. from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria with a dissertation on the performance of the black spiritual. Since 2012, she has published three books in Spanish with in-depth analysis of the problems that singers and conductors face in the interpretation of African-American spirituals.