Sinfonietta DuPage opens season with Beethoven’s 7th Symphony

The Sinfonietta DuPage hosts its first concert of the season featuring Timothy Archbold on cello in Luigi Boccherini’s “Konzert fur Violocell” No. 9 in Bb Major. This program also features Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and excerpts from Leo Delibes’s “Le Roi s’amuse.”

The concert, under the direction of Dan D’Andrea, will be at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 26, at St. Paul United Church of Christ, 5739 Dunham Road in Downers Grove.

Tickets are available only at the door. Adult admission is $22 and $12 for students and seniors. Information can be found via facebook.com/sinfoniettadupage/. Parking is free.

Archbold was born in Castlemaine, Central Victoria in Australia. His studies include the University of Melbourne, Hochschule for Kunste in Bremen Germany and Wichita State University. He has been the assistant principal with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra and is in the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. He currently is on the faculty of the Music Institute of Chicago.

Luigi Boccherini was an Italina composer and cellist of the early Rococo classical period, associated with a courtly and galante style. He was a virtuoso cellist and often played violin repertoire on the cello at pitch. The ninth cello concerto has long been an integral part of standard cello literature, with its four plus octave range. The work was heavily altered by German cellist and arranger Friedrich Grutzmacher, drawing music from previous cello concertos by Boccherini as well writing his own cadenzas for the work.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 premiered Dec. 8, 1813. He himself conducted the premiere at a concert to benefit Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded in battle in the Napoleonic Wars. The same program featured the premiere of the martial “Wellington’s Victory.” The work became one of Beethoven’s most popular works and remains an orchestral standard. The work is one of the composer’s most optimistic works. In fact, Wagner thought the piece was the perfect dance music, calling it “the apotheosis of the dance.” By contrast, the second movement is a funeral march, as perhaps Beethoven imagined several processions converging upon a cemetery at once. Beethoven was one of the first composers to demand and obtain an equal footing with the aristocracy solely on the basis of his genius. The emerging middle-class audience and the growth of public concerts provided ample opportunity for the performance of his music.

Delibes was a prolific composer of opera comique and ballet, and perhaps best known for his opera “Lakme.” “Le Roi s’amuse” (“The King Amuses Himself”) is a French play in five acts written by Victor Hugo. In 1882, Delibes composed incidental music for the revival of “Le Roi s’amuse” at the Comedie-Francaise, consisting of a suite of pastiche medieval dances for orchestra (“six airs de danse dans le style ancient”). The hero of the play is Triboulet, a court jester who attacks contemporary society. In the work, the king is a womanizer and sets his sights on the Countess de Cosse. Triboulet encourages the king to kill her husband. This sets off a play filled with curses, disguises, and the ultimate murder of Triboulet’s own daughter.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency and National Endowment for the Arts.

For information, visit sinfoniettabelcanto.org/wordpress/sinfonietta-dupage/.