Orchestral Favorites
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Join the Pavia Wind Quintet for an afternoon of music that travels from the Scottish Highlands to a drowsy Parisian afternoon, a Spanish street party, and a Russian art gallery.
We are delighted to be joined by pianist Kate Mariana Brown. A classically trained pianist, accompanist, organist, and composer based in Minneapolis, Kate has been performing for over two decades, with extensive experience accompanying vocalists and instrumentalists.
Three of our program's pieces are performed in arrangements by Lisa Portus, a London-based bassoonist and graduate of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. She founded her publishing imprint Portus Press in 2008, and its catalog has since grown to more than 500 arrangements for wind chamber ensembles. Her arrangements are played by quintets around the world.
Malcolm Arnold — Four Scottish Dances (arr. Hugh Levey)
Sir Malcolm Arnold (of "The Bridge on the River Kwai" fame) wrote these four loving, slightly cheeky portraits of Scotland in 1957 — stately strathspeys, a whirlwind reel that tipsy-lurches into a sliding bassoon solo, a songlike Hebridean melody for "a calm summer's day," and a blazing one-and-a-half-minute finale. Listen for bagpipe drones and skirls, reinvented for five winds.
Claude Debussy — Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (arr. Lisa Portus, with piano)
The piece where music stepped into the modern age: a lone flute traces a winding, dreamy line over hushed colors that float rather than resolve. Debussy's ten-minute daydream, inspired by Mallarmé's poem of a faun half-remembering a drowsy afternoon, translates beautifully to wind quintet and piano — it begins, after all, with the most famous flute solo ever written.
Emmanuel Chabrier — España (arr. Lisa Portus, with piano)
Fresh from a six-month Spanish holiday in 1882, Chabrier poured café music, plazas, and heel-stamping jotas into six minutes of pure joie de vivre — encored on the spot at its premiere. Mahler called it "the start of modern music." If you want to dance in your pew, you'll be in excellent historical company.
Modest Mussorgsky — Pictures at an Exhibition (arr. Lisa Portus, with piano)
Composed in a white-hot three weeks after the death of his artist friend Viktor Hartmann, this musical gallery tour links ten portraits — gnomes, marketplaces, catacombs, the witch Baba Yaga, and the blazing Great Gate of Kyiv — with a lumbering Promenade that depicts Mussorgsky himself strolling from canvas to canvas. Made world-famous by Ravel's orchestration, it feels newly intimate for five winds and piano.
We are delighted to be joined by pianist Kate Mariana Brown. A classically trained pianist, accompanist, organist, and composer based in Minneapolis, Kate has been performing for over two decades, with extensive experience accompanying vocalists and instrumentalists.
Three of our program's pieces are performed in arrangements by Lisa Portus, a London-based bassoonist and graduate of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. She founded her publishing imprint Portus Press in 2008, and its catalog has since grown to more than 500 arrangements for wind chamber ensembles. Her arrangements are played by quintets around the world.
Malcolm Arnold — Four Scottish Dances (arr. Hugh Levey)
Sir Malcolm Arnold (of "The Bridge on the River Kwai" fame) wrote these four loving, slightly cheeky portraits of Scotland in 1957 — stately strathspeys, a whirlwind reel that tipsy-lurches into a sliding bassoon solo, a songlike Hebridean melody for "a calm summer's day," and a blazing one-and-a-half-minute finale. Listen for bagpipe drones and skirls, reinvented for five winds.
Claude Debussy — Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (arr. Lisa Portus, with piano)
The piece where music stepped into the modern age: a lone flute traces a winding, dreamy line over hushed colors that float rather than resolve. Debussy's ten-minute daydream, inspired by Mallarmé's poem of a faun half-remembering a drowsy afternoon, translates beautifully to wind quintet and piano — it begins, after all, with the most famous flute solo ever written.
Emmanuel Chabrier — España (arr. Lisa Portus, with piano)
Fresh from a six-month Spanish holiday in 1882, Chabrier poured café music, plazas, and heel-stamping jotas into six minutes of pure joie de vivre — encored on the spot at its premiere. Mahler called it "the start of modern music." If you want to dance in your pew, you'll be in excellent historical company.
Modest Mussorgsky — Pictures at an Exhibition (arr. Lisa Portus, with piano)
Composed in a white-hot three weeks after the death of his artist friend Viktor Hartmann, this musical gallery tour links ten portraits — gnomes, marketplaces, catacombs, the witch Baba Yaga, and the blazing Great Gate of Kyiv — with a lumbering Promenade that depicts Mussorgsky himself strolling from canvas to canvas. Made world-famous by Ravel's orchestration, it feels newly intimate for five winds and piano.
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Where is it happening?
Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, MN, United States
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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Host or PublisherPavia Wind Quintet
