The ICM Orchestra of Park University will present its first concert of the 2019-20 season on Friday 27 September 2019 at 7:30 PM. This concert will take place at the Graham Tyler Memorial Chapel at Park University, and complementary free admission is provided. The program consists of works by Mendelssohn, Vaughan Williams, and Haydn, and will feature guest soloist, Dr. Margaret Marco.
Program
Symphonic Movement in C Minor, Mendelssohn
Concerto for Oboe and Strings, Vaughan Williams
Margaret Marco, Oboe
Symphony No. 100, “Military”, Haydn
The program opens with the Symphonic Movement in C Minor by Felix Mendelssohn, a stormy and emotional work for string orchestra. Written at the age of 14, the young Mendelssohn pairs a dramatic, yearning slow introduction, filled with human pathos, with a longer and faster section that uses all the rules of strict counterpoint to create a full tapestry of emotion, reaching from the deepest despair to the most exhilarating joy; an amazing achievement for a young composer stretching his compositional “wings”!
After the strenuous music of Mendelssohn comes the serene Oboe Concerto by the 20th-century English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The oboe part exhibits a wide palette of colour both plaintive and elegant, and the string writing moves from lush warmth to the playfulness of dance. Dr. Margaret Marco, Professor of Oboe at the University of Kansas School of Music, will join the ICM Orchestra as soloist.
Joseph Haydn’s life-affirming Symphony No.100, nicknamed the “Military” symphony (because of its percussion instruments used in military bands of the early 19 th -century) will conclude the evening’s program. This work, like other late Haydn major-key symphonies, is primarily an extroverted, joyous piece, albeit with its moments of sorrow and darkness. Although the entire work breathes the spirit of the great outdoors, the fourth movement especially brings the listener into the rollicking world of late 18 th -century “hunt” music with its bright tempo, rapid horn calls, and music that actually slows to a stop in mid-point (before once again breaking forth), as if needing a rest from the perpetual motion of the driving finale; a brilliant close to an exuberant work!
The concert is open to the public. Admission is complimentary courtesy of Park University.
Biography
Margaret Marco is Professor of Oboe at the University of Kansas School of Music and principal oboist of the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra. She began her professional career as the principal oboist of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Maracaibo in Venezuela. Since then, her many solo, chamber and orchestral performances have taken her to a variety of prestigious international venues in locations such as Japan, Costa Rica, England, Canada, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy and China where she performed and presented master classes at the distinguished Central Conservatory in Beijing. Other festivals and concert appearances include the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, California; New Frontiers Music Festival in Laramie, Wyoming; the Sunflower Music Festival in Topeka, KS; Encuentro de Oboes y Fagots, in Costa Rica and many International Double Reed Society (IDRS) Conferences. She served as Chair of the prestigious IDRS Fernand Gillet-Hugo Fox Oboe Competition from 2009-2017 and holds degrees from Northwestern University, The University of Iowa and the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Her teachers include Ray Still, Grover Schiltz, Nancy Ambrose King and Mark Weiger.
A strong advocate for new music for her instrument, Dr. Marco has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, Mu Phi Epsilon and the University of Kansas to perform and record new chamber works by American composers. She can be heard with the KU Wind Ensemble performing Copland’s Quiet City on the NAXOS label and on NAVONA Records performing Gorgeous Nothings by Ingrid Stölzel and Bells and Grass by Juliana Hall. Other recordings include her solo CD, Hidden Gems: Oboe Sonatas of the French Baroque, Allégresse; music for flute, oboe and piano and Fresh Ink. She is heard frequently performing on Kansas Public Radio. In 2016 she commissioned the A Siege Of Herons, a concerto for oboe d’amore and strings by Forrest Pierce, which she premiered with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra.
