MORE STRINGS

You are cordially invited to UNLV Symphony Orchestra second concert of 2011-2012 season! Program to include works by Stravinsky, Rachmaninov and Mussorgsky!
Jean Ahn Benton is featured as our soloist and winner of annual UNLV Symphony concerto competition!

Please come and support our talented young musicians!



UNLV HAM HALL PROBABLY 7


Program Notes




Dawn on the Moscow River
Modest Mussorgsky


Dawn on the Moscow River began as a Prelude to Khovanshchina, Modest Mussorgsky’s epic opera
about the political turmoil surrounding Peter the Great’s accession to the throne. Mussorgsky began
compiling the libretto for the opera, which he wrote himself, in 1872. Over the following nine years,
Mussorgsky shifted his attention between Khovanshchina, Boris Godunov, and Sorochintsï Fair, leaving
Khovanshchina unfinished at the time of his death in 1881. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a prolific Russian
composer and Mussorgsky’s close friend, took it upon himself to orchestra and complete a number of
Mussorgsky’s works, including Khovanshchina. He assembled the work into its present form from two
separate versions. Even still, the opera takes approximately four hours to perform. The comparatively
short prelude lasts a mere six minutes and sets the stage for the opera by subtly evoking a sunrise. The
prelude is a lyrical string of variations based on a Russian folk song. The work avoids bombastic
outbursts, moving seamlessly between different orchestrations and harmonizations of the folk song.
Dawn on the Moscow River has since solidified its place in orchestral literature as an independently
performed tone poem. Dmitri Shostakovich also orchestrated the prelude.