THE HELENA SYMPHONY PRESENTS THE SPECIAL
MOZART BY CANDLELIGHT
So far this Season the Helena Symphony has welcome more than 7,500 viewers to the concert hall and online with HomeStream Your Helena Symphony presented by AARP Montana!
Join the Helena Symphony at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church on Saturday, 13 November at 7:30 p.m. for the gorgeous and captivating Mozart by Candlelight.
“Mozart by Candlelight is our way to reflect on the past year, not because of the challenges we have faced, but because of the beauty and joy we have experience in 2021 along with the challenges. There is no light without darkness, and this concert is truly a celebration of the light.” says Director of Development & Communications, Cameron Betchey. “Season 67 is all about reclaiming life through music and celebrating the strength and beauty of the Helena community. Each person joining us in the concert hall and online is part of our mission to engage, enrich, transform, and inspire lives through music.”
Acclaimed Pianist Anna Kislitsyna returns to the Helena Symphony! Pianist and harpsichordist Anna Kislitsyna made her solo debut at age 10 with the Omsk Symphony Orchestra in Russia. She hails from a long and noble tradition of music making in Russia with bother her parents and her brother being professional musicians. From 2002 to 2012, she served as the soloist in residence of the Omsk Symphony where she performed multiple piano concerti and chamber music recitals. Other accomplishments include prizes in the Lautard-Chevtchenko Competition in France, International Chamber Music Competition in Finland, Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, IV Chopin International Piano Competition in Connecticut, and the All Russia Piano Competition among others. Ms. Kislitsyna completed her DMA at Temple University with her dissertation on Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for piano and strings.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
No other composer has mastered every musical form as Mozart did and done so with such ease. Like Handel, but to an even higher degree, Mozart would develop and achieve perfection in his imagination before his hand ever began to write. Whereas most composers, even the great Beethoven, would go through countless drafts and revisions before completing a work, Mozart’s first draft was his final draft. As a child prodigy, Mozart was immediately recognized as an unprecedented musical genius. Under his father’s tutelage, the young Mozart became a virtuoso performer on the keyboard and violin. By the age of eight, he had composed his first symphony and had toured most of Europe, performing for dignitaries, royalty, and prominent composers of the day, who were simply awed by the youth’s abilities and musical imagination. During his brief 36 years, Mozart composed over 600 works, including dozens of operas, many mass settings, choral works, songs, ballets, 41 symphonies, divertimentos, instrumental dances, marches, serenades, sonatas, 31 piano concertos, 8 violin concertos, and other concertos for flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, a new arrangement of Handel’s Messiah, and a Requiem, his final work.
Acclaimed Russian Pianist Anna Kislitsyna brings Haydn’s graceful and intimate Piano Concerto to life, and the HSO performs a comedic overture by opera composer Domenico Cimarosa along with Mozart’s first symphonic masterpiece – his sparkling Symphony No. 29 – and all by candlelight.
Mozart by Candlelight will be presented thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, Ascent Bank, Boxwoods Fine Homes & Lifestyles, AARP Montana, Treasure State Internet & Telegraph, and the Carolina Bed & Breakfast.
Beethoven considered Haydn at first as merely a venerable professor, and the Romantics (especially Schumann and Berlioz) said Haydn was only a skillful supplier of fragile, courtly works, without lasting value.
Today, Franz Joseph Haydn serves as the perfect representative of the Classical era, the period of 1750-1820, the time of Mozart, the Age of Enlightenment, the era of order, reason, and the time of the American and French Revolutions. Haydn represents his epoch so well, rather than Mozart, because he, like Bach, appeared to detain the forward motion of time. Whereas Mozart and Schubert constantly shifted from the known to the unknown, from the past to the present, and from the present to the future – Bach and Haydn were final destinations, syntheses, and culminations of their eras, techniques, and artistic forms.
By the end of Haydn’s career, he was his generation’s greatest musical figure – the Classical era’s most valid embodiment. The patriarch of the modern-day symphony and string quartet, Haydn possessed a natural yet noble tone, a feeling for formal order and, inside this order, a freedom of invention with a subtlety of expression and humor.
HOMESTREAM YOUR HELENA SYMPHONY PRESENTED BY AARP MONTANA
The Helena Symphony is especially grateful to AARP Montana, who secured the naming rights to HomeStream Your Helena Symphony in 2020. “AARP Montana is so excited to help bring the artistic excellence of the Helena Symphony’s music-making to people in the safety of their homes,” says Tim Summers, State Director of AARP Montana.
How?
These live streams can be viewed on a smart phone, tablet, laptop and desktop computers, smart televisions, and televisions connected to the internet – or anywhere you have access to YouTube. Most televisions offer YouTube as an app or can be attached to another computing device to watch on the big screen. While nothing can replace the experience of attending a live performance, we feel that the live stream offers an exciting and new way to enjoy a concert. Each stream will be shot by 6-7 cameras and the camera crew will be able to operate within the Orchestra, offering close-up shots of musicians, front-side views of Maestro Scott, and visuals that are not possible by sitting in the auditorium. There will also be a pre-concert host, and short backstage interviews throughout the evening.
There is no charge for the HomeStream Your Helena Symphony presented by AARP Montana, which will be available on YouTube, the Helena Symphony’s website, and the Symphony’s Facebook page. There will be an option available online and through Venmo to donate to the Helena Symphony.
Other highlights include the most popular opera of all time – Bizet’s Carmen. Season 67 will also feature the most
exciting birthday celebration of the decade, the SOLID GOLD – Happy 50th, Maestro! fundraiser on 20 November
2021. Tickets are on sale now on the Helena Symphony website or by calling the Symphony box office. Tickets are $100
each and $750 for a table of 8.
Season 67 also includes several free Educational Concerts and a red-carpet Benefit Concert, and much more!
In addition to the substantial discounts on season tickets, subscribers also receive the new Bring A Friend Pass, The Art of Listening Newsletter, first access to Non-Series Concerts, and several other benefits. Single concert tickets can also be purchased ($55-$15 plus a $5 transaction fee) online at www.helenasymphony.org, by calling the Symphony Box Office (406.442.1860), or visiting the Symphony Box Office located on the Walking Mall at the Placer Building (21 N. Last Chance Gulch, Suite 100) between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
