Music: Sun Feb 19

Music suggestive of churches, holy places, and prayer is featured in the Prelude this Sunday morning at CUUC. Claude Debussy’s massive evocation of the Catherdral of Ys, which rises and sinks with the sun, according to the Medieval legend, opens the Prelude. Isaac Albéniz’s depiction of Córdoba, Spain, home of the greatest mosque outside of the Middle East, built upon the ruins of an earlier church and Roman temple and festooned with a Renaissance-era cathedral at its center, follows.

Other works evoke martial or bellicose associations. Schumann’s festive “War Song” is a popular number from a collection of pieces written for young piano students. The first of Johannes Brahms’s Four Ballades, Op. 10 is a programmatic depiction of the Scottish legend of Edward, a young warrior guilty of parricide. Mozart’s celebrated “Rondo all turca”, the last movement of his Piano Sonata in A Major, K. 331, features imitations of Turkish military music, all the rage in the Vienna of the composer’s day. Read on for programming details.

Prelude: Adam Kent, piano

From Préludes, Book I

            La cathédrale engloutie

                                    Claude Debussy

From Cantos de España

            Córdoba

                                    Isaac Albéniz

Opening Music:
Kriegslied, Op. 68, No. 31 (War Song)

                                                Robert Schumann

Offertory:
Ballade in D Minor, Op. 10, No. 1 “Edward”

                                                Johannes Brahms

Interlude:
Rondo all turca

                                                Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart