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Bernard Rands’ Danza Petrificada Premieres with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

May. 04, 2011

Commissioned for the occasion of Riccardo Muti’s inaugural season as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the 2010/11 season, Bernard Rands’ Danza Petrificada debuted on May 5 in Chicago. Composed also for the city-wide celebration Mexico in Chicago, the piece pays tribute to the 200th anniversary of the start of Mexico’s War of Independence, as per the maestro’s request. Prior to each performance, a half-hour conversation led by Carl Grapentine will take place in the Grainger Ballroom. Muti conducts follow up performances on May 6, 7 and 10. Bernard Rands writes:

The title comes from a beautiful poem by Octavio Paz in which he describes a Mexican village. ‘[…] festin de formas, danza petrificada bajo las nubes que hacen y se deshacen y no acaban de hacerse, siempre en tránsito hacis su forma venidera (a banquet of forms, a petrified dance under the clouds that make and unmake and never stop making themselves, always in transit toward their future forms).’ Such a wonderful description of the phenomenon of music itself!

Lawrence A. Johnson writes on the premiere in the Chicago Classical Review online:

Rands’ piece is more edgy and impressionistic than sunny homage, a moody tone poem with passing Mexican elements, glimpsed as if through a refracted lens. Danza Petrificada is that rare work that manages to be both intelligent and individual, while also serving its functional purpose as a lively, audience-friendly, nine-minute curtain-raiser—even with the abrupt coda.

For more on Bernard Rands visit www.schott-music.com and www.bernardrands.com.

For information on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s performances go to www.cso.org.

Bernard Rands
Danza Petrificada (2010)
for orchestra
pic.3(3.afl).2.ca.Ebcl.3(3.bcl).2-4.3.2.btbn.1-timp.4perc-2hp.cel-str
9’

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