Welcome to Springtime

Spring has definitely sprung and the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra is paying a tribute to this beautiful season!

1944, and American composer Aaron Copland sets about writing his “Appalachian Spring” ballet upon commission of choreographer and dancer Martha Graham. Awarded with the Pulitzer Prize for Music the following year, the work has since achieved widespread popularity in the form of an orchestral suite.

1887, and one of French composer Claude Debussy‘s assignments as a Prix de Rome scholar at the Villa Medici at the time was to send back to the Fine Arts Academy in France an orchestral score so his benefactors could judge his professional progress. All he managed to turn in however was a piano duet called “Printemps”. It was as late as 1913 that Debussy got around to presenting an orchestral version.

And we come to 1841, when Robert Schumann wrote his First Symphony in an astonishing burst of creative energy over four days in January of that year. Schumann had articulated his symphonic ambitions as early as 1829 to his teacher, future father-in-law and nemesis, Friedrich Wieck. ‘If you only knew how I feel driven and spurred on, how my symphonies could already have reached opus 100 if only I had written them down, and how comfortable I feel with the orchestra…’ The result we have in this concert!

Copland: “Appalachian Spring”, full orchestra suite
Debussy: “Printemps”, suite symphonique
Schumann: Symphony no. 1 in B flat major, op. 38 (“Spring”)

Conductor: Jens Georg Bachmann

Duration: 90'

Ticket prices: €12, €7 (18-26 yrs, pensioners), €5 (under 18)