Travel-themed piano set for Friday at Gobin UMC

Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Shannon Wettstein Sadler

Visiting guest pianist Shannon Wettstein Sadler, an assistant professor of music at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, will present a solo recital of works inspired by travel on Thursday, March 5 at 7:30 p.m. in Gobin United Methodist Church.

All are welcome and admission is free.

The program includes the work that launched this project, “Der Saus und Braus (The Fun Runner),” written in 2017 by Texas composer Joseph Klein. Based on a character in the writings of Elias Canetti, “The Fun Runner” is about the excitement of being an international jet setter.

Pillars of the program are two works written about travel from the perspective of the one left behind to stay home: Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother,” written in 1704 when he was just 19 years old on the occasion of his older brother’s departure to be a court musician in Sweden, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s composition “Les Adieux” (1809-10), dedicated to his friend and patron, Archduke Rudolph, who was forced to leave Vienna because of Napoleon’s attack on the city.

Andrew May’s “Charnel House” (2010) was inspired by the music of Frederic Chopin and the lives of exiled refugees who have fled -- and continue to flee -- war-torn parts of the world, as well as the memory of those who were not able to escape the horrors of war and foreign occupation.

Franz Liszt’s “Aubord d’une source” (1855) captures memories and sounds of travel in new cultures, while Chopin’s “Polonaise-fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61” (1846) communicates homesickness for his native Poland through the folk rhythms of the polonaise.

Mark Applebaum’s “Discipline 5: Travels in Outer Space” (1998) is inspired by the self-mythology of the late musician Sun Ra, who claimed that he “arrived” on Planet Earth after being born on Saturn.

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