Kamuela Philharmonic Orchestra opens 12th season Sunday

The Kamuela Philharmonic Orchestra will open its 12th season with a concert at the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel &Bungalows Hale Hoaloa Pavilion on Sunday at 4 p.m.

The orchestra, led by guest conductor Brian Dollinger, will perform a program titled “The Power of Inspiration,” beginning with the expressive and driving “Egmont Overture” by Ludwig van Beethoven, continuing with Georges Bizet’s intimate, witty and playful “Jeux d’enfants, Op. 22,” and concluding with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s famous “Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 3,” which carries the audience on a journey into fate.

Tickets for the event are available online at www.kamuelaphil.org. Admission is $20 for adults and $5 for children 12 and younger.

Beethoven’s “Overture to Egmont,” part of a set of incidental pieces composed for a 1787 play by Wolfgang Von Goethe about the life and heroism of a 16th century Dutch nobleman, the Count of Egmont, premiered in 1810. The piece exalts the sacrifice of a man condemned to death for taking a valiant stand against oppression, and was meant as an expression of Beethoven’s outrage over Napoleon Bonaparte’s decision to crown himself emperor of France in 1804. The powerful overture later became one of Beethoven’s most famous works and has been compared in style to his “Fifth Symphony,” completed two years earlier.

Bizet’s “Jeux d’enfants (Children’s Games), Op. 22” was originally composed in 1871 as a set of 12 miniatures for piano duet. Bizet, a French composer of the romantic era, was best-known for his operas, including “Carmen,” now one of the most famous works in the opera repertoire. Although Bizet orchestrated five of these miniatures as the “Petite Suite,” none of his keyboard or orchestral compositions became popular during his lifetime and have come to be more appreciated in the 20th century.

Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36” was written in 1877, a time of great turmoil in the composer’s life and first performed in 1878. In a letter to his patron Madame von Meck in 1877, he said the ominous opening theme for horns and bassoons represented fate hanging over one’s head like a sword. This all-consuming gloom devours the few, brief glimpses of happiness, represented by waltz themes. The second movement expresses the melancholy felt at the end of a weary day, and the third movement the fleeting images that pass through the mind after drinking a little wine. The fourth movement is his prescription for happiness, so this is a symphony that moves from gloom to melancholy to slow recovery to life-affirming energy.

Dollinger, is one of three finalists for the position of Kamuela Philharmonic artistic director, selected after an exhaustive search following the move of founding artistic director Madeline Schatz to New York at the end of last season. He is currently conductor and music director of the Muscatine Symphony Orchestra and Clinton Symphony Orchestra, both in Iowa, where he is known for creating a fun, inviting, energetic and enriching atmosphere at each rehearsal and performance.

For more information, to get involved or make a denotation to the nonprofit Kamuela Philharmonic Orchestra, visit www.Kamuelaphil.com.