Maslanka Weekly highlights excellent performances of David Maslanka’s music from around the web.
From The Schwäbisches Jugendblasorchester des Allgäu-Schwäbischen Musikbunde’s website:
Every symphonic wind orchestra embodies and represents the community to which it belongs and from which it has grown. It is, as it were, the calling card – the figurehead of a region and of the Allgäu-Swabian Music Association.
The Swabian Youth Brass Orchestra, an institution of the youth in the Allgäu-Swabian Music Association, consists of highly talented young musicians who are selected from the Swabian music bands.
The background of the Swabian Youth Brass Orchestra, founded in 1988 on the initiative of the former ASM President Prof. Karl Kling, was and is to promote the promotion of young, talented musicians and to bring them together in a top national orchestra. The Swabian Youth Brass Orchestra is an asset to the Allgäu-Swabian Music Association and the entire Swabian cultural landscape.
This week, we feature Toni Scholl and the Schwäbisches Jugendblasorchester des Allgäu-Schwäbischen Musikbunde in a new live performance of Symphony No. 8.
Symphony No. 8
From David’s Program Note:
Symphony No. 8 is in three distinct movements, bur the musical layout suggests a single large-scale panoramic vista.
I began the composition process for this symphony with meditation, and was shown scenes of widespread devastation. But this music is not about the surface of our world problems. It is a response to a much deeper vital creative flow which is forcefully at work, and which will carry us through our age of crisis. This music is a celebration of life. It is about new life, continuity from the past to the future, great hope, great faith, joy, ecstatic vision, and fierce determination.
The old is continually present in the new. The first movement touches the “Gloria” from my Mass: “Glory to God in the highest,” whatever that may mean to you: the power of the universe made manifest to us and through us.
The second movement is a large fantasia on the old Lutheran chorale melody Jesu meine Freude (Jesus My Joy). The life of Christ is one powerful image of the high creative: being willing to be broken to receive the new; giving oneself up entirely so that a new idea can be born. The old form of the organ chorale prelude underlies this movement – new language out of the old.
The third movement is a music of praise and gratitude for all that is. It can be traced to the very end of the favorite old hymn tune All Creatures of Our God and King – the part with the joyous descending major scale where all the bells ring out. I recently used this tune for a set of variations in a piece called Unending Stream of Life, a name which could also be a fitting subtitle for this symphony.
Watch below as Toni Scholl leads the Schwäbisches Jugendblasorchester des Allgäu-Schwäbischen Musikbunde in a new live performance of the entirety of Symphony No. 8. (By the way, these are Jugend! Bravo!)
I. Moderate, Very Fast
II. Moderate
III. Moderate, Very Fast, Moderate, Very Fast
More info
- Toni Scholl
- Schwäbisches Jugendblasorchester des Allgäu-Schwäbischen Musikbunde
- Symphony No. 8 @ davidmaslanka.com
We would love to hear from you! If you know of any outstanding performances of David Maslanka’s music on the web, please email us at maslankaweekly@maslanka.org.
