After ten years working with the APO, our Orchestra Manager Amber Read talks about some of her orchestra-and-classical-music highlights from both the APO and her personal life.
Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra
I agreed to do the pre-concert talk for this without knowing anything about it, other than thinking that it sounded like an interesting piece by a composer that I had not encountered before. I had a lot of research to do beforehand! It was a wonderful journey of discovery and I loved everything that I found out about it.
Particularly, one thing that I thought was interesting was the third movement passacaglia – in Pachelbel’s Canon, one of the most famous examples of passacaglia, the repeating bass theme is obvious from the start, but Lutosławski is more subtle, introducing the theme at the very edge of audibility, and developing it throughout the movement. I always tell people to listen to the strings and brass a little later in the movement (at 16.41 in this recording) to hear the theme in its full glory!