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Queens Symphony Wind Ensemble: Serenades for Winds
Sunday, April 14, 3:00 pm
Free
DATE: SUN, APR 14, 2024, 3 PM
VENUE: LeFrak Concert Hall
FREE w/ Online RSVP (RSVP opens on March 14 @ 12PM)
Join us for a beautiful afternoon of music as The Queens Symphony Orchestra’s Wind Ensemble presents “Serenades for Winds,” a program that includes Dvorak’s Serenade and Mozart’s Gran Partita.
Dvorak’s Serenade for Wind Instruments was composed in 1878 after the premiere of Dvorak’s “The Cunning Peasant.” The work was heard first at a concert exclusively dedicated to his compositions. With Dvorak conducting, the serenade evoked the old atmosphere of the Rococo period. The purpose of the piece was to merge the aristocracy and higher class, with the common folk. The piece exemplifies his slavonic style, with rhythms of furiant dance, and exclusive instrumentation.
Mozart’s Gran Partita was composed almost 100 years before Dvorak’s Serenade, being completed in 1782. This seven movement piece was composed for a public concert in 1874 by Anton Stadler, a famous Austrian clarinetist. This piece stands as one of Mozart’s most beloved works and is one of the wind orchestra’s greatest masterpieces. His serenades stand today as a testament to the careful construction and quality to all of Mozart’s pieces.
The Queens Symphony Orchestra is dedicated to educating families and individuals of all ages, races, genders and abilities about the universal value and necessity of orchestral music through live performances, educational programs and access to music instruction.
QSO’s Music Director, Martin Majkut: Born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), Majkut graduated from the State Conservatory and served as Assistant Conductor of the Slovak Philharmonic while earning his Ph.D. in conducting at the Academy of Performing Arts. While studying, he worked with the Slovak Philharmonic, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Slovak State Philharmonic and Slovak Sinfonietta. Majkut came to the U.S. as a Fulbright scholar in 2003 and earned a D.M.A., his second doctorate, in 2008, at the University of Arizona. He also studied with Gianluigi Gelmetti at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy and Salvador Mas Conde at the Wiener Meisterkurse in Vienna, Austria. Majkut has been serving as Music Director of the Rogue Valley Symphony (RVS) in Ashland, Oregon since 2010. The RVS has experienced a remarkable growth under his leadership and is enjoying an unprecedented level of support and enthusiasm in the community. The 50 th season of the orchestra, with five world premieres and a star-studded line-up of soloists, earned him an invitation to the June 2018 League of American Orchestras conference as a featured presenter in the Frontiers: Risk + Reward session. Maestro Majkut’s ability to inspire the orchestra and deliver exciting, polished and powerful performances results in enthused audiences and many sold out concerts. He has been called “amazing, supremely gifted” and “an incomparable, unique and perhaps irreplaceable asset” by the press in Oregon. Starting with the 2017/18 season, Maestro Majkut assumed the music directorship of the Queens Symphony Orchestra in New York. Performing in a variety of ethnically diverse communities, the orchestra is quickly gaining popularity in the dynamic borough of 2.35 million people.