Join us for a program featuring orchestral suites by Bach and Stravinsky – plus, a very special performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor featuring ECO Concertmaster Katherine Thayer!

Originally written as charming piano duets between Igor Stravinsky and his children, Suites No. 1 and 2 for Small Orchestra are filled with jubilant melodies and witty musical satire. This will be the first time ECO has performed works by Stravinsky during ECO Music Director William Hill’s tenure.

Johann Sebastian Bach is regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time, and his Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D Major, BWV 1069, is some of the most joyful and delightful music ever written. We know that Bach himself would use “laughter” and “joy” as the text association for this piece since he would go on to use the opening French overture as the first movement of his 1725 Christmas cantata “Unser Mund sei voll Lachens”, BWV 110, which when translated means, “Our mouths are full of laughter”.

During the summer of 1838, Felix Mendelssohn finally wrote to his longtime friend Ferdinand David, who had repeatedly asked Felix to compose a violin concerto, “I should like to write a violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor runs through my head, the beginning of which gives me no peace.” It would be seven more years before David premiered, Op. 64, in March of 1845 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany. Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, an iconic masterpiece and one of the all-time greatest romantic violin concertos will be performed by ECO’s very own concertmaster Katherine Thayer as the grand finale of our Fall Concerts.