December 7 2025: Celebrating the Symphony

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Sunday, December 7, 2025 – 3 pm
St. Matthew’s Catholic Church, St. Paul, MN

Barber: Overture to “The School for Scandal”, Op. 5
Bonds: Montgomery Variations
Bliss: “Two Studies for Orchestra”
Stravinsky: Suite from The Firebird (1919 revision)

Join us on Sunday, December 7 at 3 pm for a concert celebrating the symphony.

Samuel Barber’s Overture to The School for Scandal, Op. 5 was composed in 1931 and was his first work for full orchestra. The piece was written while Barber was completing his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, and he intended it to reflect the spirit of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play The School for Scandal. (Source: Wikipedia: The School for Scandal (Barber))

Margaret Bonds, an American composer, pianist, arranger, and teacher, was one of the first Black composers and performers to gain national recognition in the United States and frequently collaborated with Langston Hughes. Bonds’ Montgomery Variations – a set of seven variations on the spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me” – was written in response to the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and was later dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr. The work also reflects other significant events of the civil rights movement, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the broader rejection of segregationist policies across the South. (Source: Wikipedia: Margaret Bonds)

Arthur Bliss’ Two Studies for Orchestra were long thought to have been lost during a World War II air raid, but were rediscovered after the composer’s death. These studies are Bliss’ earliest orchestral works and contain musical reflections of his experiences on the war’s front lines. (Source: Wise Music Classical: Two Studies for Orchestra)

Igor Stravinsky collaborated several times with ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev, including on the ballet The Firebird, based on a Russian fairy tale. The 1919 version – one of three concert-suite arrangements – is the second and remains the most frequently performed. Scored for a reduced orchestra compared to the original ballet production, it preserves the arc of the story and highlights Stravinsky’s synthesis of modernist techniques with Russian cultural and folk elements to evoke the work’s magical world. (Sources: Wikipedia: The Firebird; Los Angeles Philharmonic)