SOSL premiere concert

by Mahes PERERA

The Japanese conductor Keiko Kobayashi will for the third time conduct the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka’s annul Premiere Concert at the Ladies College Hall on October 31. A distinguished conductor, she has performed with several orchestras including the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Nagoya Philharmonic.

Ado Kihara

The programme for the concert will include :

a) Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings op 11

b) Weber’s Clarinet concerto No.1 in F Minor - the soloist will be Ado Kihara.

c) Aaron Copland’s El Salsu Mexico

3) Dvorak’s Cello Concert in B Minor B 191. Here the Sri Lankan cellist Dushy Perera will be the soloist.

Barber’s Adagio, the composer’s best known work was originally intended to be the second movement of his String Quartet. It was managed by the composer for the conductor Arturo Toscanini who premiered it on radio with his NBC Symphony in November 1938. It’s soul - wrenching pathos vividly calls to mind its use in climatic and dramatic moments in films, at funerals and at commemoration event.

Weber’s Clarinet Concerto is the most often composition performed and is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. The soloist is the Japanese clarinetist Ado Kihara, who has a degree in Music and plays regularly with different orchestras and chamber groups in Japan.

Aaron Copland’s El Salsu Mexico was composed when music with a semblance of a tune disqualified one from being taken seriously by connoisseurs. Copland’s ‘populist phase’ yielded some accessible works for listeners alienated by alternative tonality. It is scored for a very long orchestra with a generous line-up of percussion.

Dvorak’s Cello Concerts in B Minor is probably the greatest ever written for the instrument and the composers sole and valedictory masterwork in the genre, received its first performance in at the Queen’s Hall, London in 1896. Dushy Perera the soloist in this composition is the principal cellist for both the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka and the Bombay Chamber Orchestra. She is also the Director of her Cantando Cello Ensemble.

The Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka is one of the oldest orchestras in South Asia. Over the years several internationally recognized Sri Lankan and foreign soloists and conductors have performed with the orchestra.