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Community Corner

Gershwin Piano Concerto (with soloist Chie Nagatani) Featured in Pasadena Community Orchestra’s Free Concert

This

concert has something for everyone: classic Bach for strings, familiar and

beautiful programmatic music from Grieg, and one of George Gershwin’s best

fusions of jazz and classical music, all presented free by Pasadena Community

Orchestra. The Piano Concerto in F Major

is more jazzy – and more classical – than his Rhapsody in Blue. This all-American piece opens with a Charleston-rhythm

theme, lulls with a sleepy and bluesy middle movement, and closes with a finale

that’s a wild “orgy of rhythms.” Award-winning pianist Chie Nagatani has

performed extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Italy, Poland and

Japan. Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite

contains some of the composer’s best-known and most beautiful melodies, from

the sweet and lovely evocation of “Morning” in the opening movement to the

raucous dancing trolls “In the Hall of the Mountain King” in the finale.

Listeners will become viewers, too, as they watch the themes of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #3 get lobbed

among nine sections of violins, violas and cellos. A reception follows the

concert, at which audience members will have the opportunity to meet the soloist

and the other musicians.

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