All Concerts are on Sundays at 3:00 p.m.
at Valley Vista Performing Arts Center
15550 N. Parkview Place, Surprise, AZ 85374
WVS Administration: (623) 236-6787
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Click Here to Download the 2018 – 2019 Season Brochure and Ticket Order Form
2018-2019 Season Concerts
December 16, 2018
Join the West Valley Chorale and the West Valley Symphony for the greatest seasonal favorite of all time, Handel’s Messiah!
Featuring Ken Goodenberger, Jennifer Nagy, Earl Hazeall and Alexis Davis Hazell
Messiah, George Frederick Handel
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~ Program Notes ~
George Frideric Handel (Born in Halle, Germany on February 23, 1685; died in London, April 14, 1759) was destined to become one of the most famous opera composers of his time. He eventually left Germany, settling in London where he experienced great success and popularity. But musical tastes changed, and serious opera gave way to more contemporary and populist material. His operas were no longer drawing the crowds. Handel was facing bankruptcy and took up writing Oratorios. Messiah was his sixth work in this form.
To a text selected from the King James Bible, Handel began composition of Messiah on Saturday, August 22, 1741 and finished it in 24 days on September 14. Handel, referring to the composition of Messiah said, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me and the great God himself.”
Messiah was first heard in Dublin on April 13, 1742. The Dublin Journal reported “Words are wanting to express the exquisite Delight it afforded to the admiring crouded Audience. The Sublime, the Grand, and the Tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestic and moving Words, conspired to transport and charm the ravished Heart and Ear.” Now, 276 years later, Messiah is still producing the same effect. It has maintained a unique position: it is the most renowned of oratorios, the most familiar extended work to an English text, and is the most often sung of any big setting of Biblical texts. Throughout the English-speaking world no other musical work has so long maintained unbroken popularity and respect, not to say personal affection.
Handel never hesitated to modify the Messiah score to suit the needs of difference performances: a definitive version does not exist. Handel wrote the work for chorus, soloists and an orchestra consisting only of strings, timpani, probably harpsichord and performed the work with whatever instruments might be available such as a pair of oboes or trumpets, a bassoon or organ.
Messiah deals with the Prophecy, Advent, Nativity, Mission, Sacrifice and Atonement, Ascension, Gospel Tidings and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is in three parts, with more than fifty individual numbers, from which the 28 numbers presented here were drawn. Messiah is not, of course, a liturgical work: it is not intended for performance as part of any church service. It is “a brilliant English concert oratorio of Italian ancestry.” It bears little resemblance to Handel’s other oratorios. It is a musical drama, the purpose of which is to project from a concert stage, in the grandest and most moving way possible, the joy of Christ’s birth and resurrection.
January 13, 2019
Welcome back young violin prodigy Jonathan Okseniuk, featured in the Mendelssohn Concerto for Violin. The program opens with the mysterious and colorful Fingal’s Cave Overture and ends with the majestic 1st Symphony by Brahms.
The Hebrides “Fingal’s Cave”
Felix Mendelssohn
Concerto in E minor for violin, Op. 64, Jonathan Okseniuk, soloist
Felix Mendelssohn
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68
Johannes Brahms
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February 10, 2019
Beethoven is back and his 5th Symphony is one of his greatest works. Suites by two close colleagues, Ravel and Stravinsky round out the concert.
Symphony No. 5 in C minor
Ludwig van Beethoven
Mother Goose Suite
Maurice Ravel
The Firebird Suite (1919)
Igor Stravinsky
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March 10, 2019
The music of George Gershwin captures the essence of what America is all about. Features Dr. Karali Hunter, NCTM in Rhapsody in Blue. You don’t want to miss this one.
Porgy and Bess
George Gershwin
Symphonic Picture
arr. Robert Russell Bennett
Rhapsody in Blue
George Gershwin
Dr. Karali Hunter
NCTM
An American in Paris
George Gershwin
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April 7, 2019
50th Anniversary
Celebration Concert
We are celebrating the West Valley Symphony’s 50th anniversary by performing a portion of the very first concert the orchestra played in 1968. Anna Han returns to dazzle us with her artistry as soloist in the Grieg Piano
The Barber of Seville Overture
Gioacchino Rossini
Symphony No. 35, K385, (Haffner Symphony)
Wolfgang Mozart
Piano Concerto in A minor, Anna Han, soloist
Edvard Grieg
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All Concerts are on Sundays at 3:00 p.m.
at Valley Vista Performing Arts Center
15550 N. Parkview Place, Surprise, AZ 85374
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623-218-7006