University Orchestra with Chancellor John V. Lombardi, Narrator
Chancellor John V. Lombardi will make a special guest appearance at the first UMass Amherst Orchestra concert of the semester. He will narrate Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, one of the most accessible and inventive introductions to the sounds and sections of the orchestra. But there will be a twist: Chancellor Lombardi will read an “updated” version of the narration written by the orchestra members themselves! Music Director Stephen Rogers Radcliffe explains: “I was drawn to Britten’s work because it offers challenging solo opportunities to our advanced students while allowing larger sections of the orchestra to develop their individual sound. The original commentary, which has the narrator introducing the sections of the orchestra, is a bit outdated and dowdy. Members of each section will create a new introduction for their instrument. The results may be unpredictable, insightful, and who knows, perhaps a little irreverent. It will be fun.” In addition to being an orchestral guide, the Britten work, written in 1946, is an effervescent set of variations on a theme by the 17th century English composer Henry Purcell.
The concert will also feature two classics from the Romantic period: Richard Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger (1867), a brass showpiece, and Antonin Dvorak’s melodic Symphony No. 8 (1889).
Maestro Radcliffe, who will direct the orchestra while Lanfranco Marcelletti, Jr. is on leave for the 2005-2006 academic year, is the founder and Laureate Music Director of the New York Chamber Ensemble, performing regularly from 1987 to 1997 at New York’s Lincoln Center, as well as on recordings, radio broadcasts and international tours. For nine seasons he served as Music Director of the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra and he was the founding Artistic Director of New Jersey’s Cape May Music Festival, an annual five-week series presenting orchestral, operatic, jazz, folk and popular concerts He is Principal Guest Conductor of the Hungarian Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, and has led “Opera in the Park” performances for thousands of music lovers in New York City. Radcliffe has commissioned and premiered major compositions by the American master composers John Corigliano, George Rochberg, Ned Rorem and Joan Tower. A prize winner of the 1988 Arturo Toscanini International Conductor’s Competition, he was a student of Leonard Bernstein, Franco Ferrara and Gustav Meier.
