Spring Strings 2024

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Concert MC is 

Miss Ella Sankaran. 

Allegra Violinist.

Caprice Strings

In the Hall of the Mountain King

Edvard Greig


The piece was written as incidental music in Henrik Ibsen's 1867 play Peer Gynt and is played as the title character enters the Troll Mountain King's hall. The scene's introduction continues: There is a great crowd of troll courtiers, gnomes and goblins. the Kings sits on his throne, with crown and sceptre, surrounded by his children and relatives. 

I Got Plenty 'o Nuttin'

From Porgy and Bess

George Gershwin

"I Got Plenty o' Nuttin' " is a bass-baritone aria sung by the character Porgy from George Gershwin's 1935 "folk-opera" Porgy and Bess.  The aria expresses a cheerful acceptance of poverty as freedom from worldly cares.

Soloist Zoe Ali

Zoe Ali started playing viola when she was 7 years old, and the song "I Got Plenty O' Nuttin' " is repertoire that Zoe is preparing for ABRSM examination.

Zoe loves engaging with other people, playing and making music together.  She is the Lead Violist in the the Onsom Orchestra, and performed with the musicians of the Hong Kong Philharmonic 50th Anniversary Fundraising Concert Orchestra earlier this year. 

Largo 

from Symphony No. 9 

Antonín Dvořák 

The Symphony No. 9 in E minor, "From the New World", was composed by Dvořák in 1893  whilst he resided in America. It is one of the most popular of all symphonies.  Astronaut Neil Armstrong took a tape recording of the New World Symphony along during the Apollo 11 mission, the first Moon landing, in 1969.  

Largo is the second movement of the symphony, and is perhaps one of the most iconic melodies in 19th century orchestral literature.

Antonín Dvořák in 1885

Con Brio

The Merry Widow Waltz

From The Merry Widow Operetta

Franz Lehár

The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Léon and Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband.

Greensleeves

Folk Song

"Greensleeves" is a traditional English folk song. A broadside ballad by the name "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves" was registered by Richard Jones at the London Stationers' Company in September 1580,  and the tune is found in several late 16th-century and early 17th-century sources.

In Hong Kong, "Greensleeves" was used as background music in Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education public listening exams until 2023, and at the opening of the MTR Tuen Ma line in 2021, a viral video of a young rail enthusiast singing the lyrics “The Tuen Ma line has opened. I am so excited!” to the tune of "Greensleeves" became an internet meme in Hong Kong. The MTR Corporation would create its own edition of the song for the extension of the East Rail line in 2022.

Trepak

from the Nutcracker Ballet

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Trepak also referred to as the Russian dance, is one of the character dances from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's famous 1892 ballet The Nutcracker. It is based on the traditional Russian and Ukrainian folk dance also called the trepak.

The Trepak is used in the Disney film Fantasia. In the sequence, flowers take the place of the Cossack dancers, with thistles resembling men in fur hats and orchids as women with bonnets.

Allegra String Ensemble

Ode to Joy

Ludwig van Beethoven

The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is a choral symphony, the final complete symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven, composed between 1822 and 1824. It was first performed in Vienna on 7 May 1824. The symphony is regarded by many critics and musicologists as a masterpiece of Western classical music and one of the supreme achievements in the history of music.


"Frère Jacques" 

Folk Song

"Frère Jacques" also known in English as "Brother John", is a nursery rhyme of French origin. The rhyme is traditionally sung in a round.  The song is about a friar who has overslept and is urged to wake up and sound the bell for the matins, the midnight or very early morning prayers for which a monk would be expected to awake.

English Round

Traditional Round

A round is a musical composition,  in which multiple voices play exactly the same melody at the unison, but with each voice beginning at different times so that different parts of the melody coincide in the different voices, but still fit harmoniously together.  Round playing builds musical independence, builds teamwork, introduces harmonic concepts and develops intonation.


Lightly Row

Franz Wiedemann

"Hänschen klein" (Little Hans, 1899) by Franz Wiedemann  (1821–1882) is a German folk song that originated in the Biedermeier period (1815–1848) of German history in the 19th century, and later became a nursery song in the early 20th century.

The folk-song lyrics of Hänschen klein tell of a boy who ventures from home into the world, and returns as a man to his family. 

Bile 'Em Cabbage Down

Folk Song

Also known as "Boil Them Cabbage Down"  is an American folk song.  Hoecakes are small cornmeal cakes that were baked over a fire on the blade of a hoe. A breakfast of hoecakes and cabbage soup testifies to the humble origins of this song. 

There are many different versions to the song lyrics, but the one below is a popular one.

Boil them cabbage down, down.  /  Turn them hoecakes 'round, 'round.

The only song that I can sing is  /  Boil them cabbage down.

Brio

Forrest Gump   - Feather Theme

Alan Silvestri

Conducted by Katherine Maru, Double Bass

The opening musical theme for the 1994 movie Forrest Gump is sometimes called the Feather Theme.  It was composed by Alan Silvestri who scored the movie. Forrest Gump is a 1994 American comedy-drama film and starred Tom Hanks.  Forrest Gump opens with a feather falling from the sky and being tossed around in the wind. This feather becomes part of the greater metaphor of Forrest's life and the events we see on screen. 

Rigadoon  

Henry Purcell

Conducted by Evelyn Chan, Violin

Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695) was an English composer of Baroque music.  Purcell's musical style was uniquely English, although it incorporated Italian and French elements. Generally considered among the greatest English opera composers,  The rigadoon was a seventeenth century dance enjoyed in both England and France, and this Henry Purcell work is one of the earliest examples. 

Pomp and Circumstance 

Military March Op. 36 No. 1

Edward Elgar

Conducted by Jayden Wong, Violin


Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO (1857 – 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire.  Elgar was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924. 

Synonymous with British pageantry, Elgar's Pomp & Circumstance Marches have been at the centre of many grand and state events including coronations. 'Land of Hope and Glory', a hymn adapted from March No. 1, was performed at the Coronation of King Charles III.

In America this is tune is known as the 'Graduation Song".

Czech Folk Song

Bohemian Folk Song

This song is from the region of Bohemia, and is a song about Annie going to the garden where cabbage grew.  The song style is a reminiscent of a Polka.

Blue Bells of Scotland

Dora Jordan / Arthur Proyr

The Bluebells of Scotland is the usual modern name for a Scottish folksong. It was written by Dora Jordan, an English actress and writer. First published in 1801.  Joseph Haydn wrote a piano trio accompaniment for this song, but the most popular arrangements is by by Arthur Pryor in 1899. This song is most commonly played with a piano or concert/military band, but has also been performed with orchestra or brass band, but also bagpipes and stringed instruments too.

Combined UP Strings Musicians

Can Can 

Jacques Offenbach


Offenbach (1819 - 1880) was a French composer and cellist of the Romantic era. The Galop from Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld is the tune most often associated with the Can-Can. 

The can-can is a music hall dance, performed by a chorus line of dancers who wear costumes like the fashions of the 1890s. 

This is a lively tune, and features every musician in the UP String Program and reflects the collaboration and celebration of the year.

Onsom Orchestra

Themes from Capriccio Italien 

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Capriccio italien was inspired by a trip Tchaikovsky took to Rome with his brother as respite from the composer's disastrous marriage.

From Rome he wrote to his friend that 

I have already completed the sketches for an Italian fantasia on folk tunes for which I believe a good fortune may be predicted. It will be effective, thanks to the delightful tunes which I have succeeded in assembling partly from anthologies, partly from my own ears in the streets.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

circa 1875

Für  Elise Jam

Based on Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor for solo piano

Ludwig van Beethoven


"Für Elise" is one of Ludwig van Beethoven's most popular compositions. It was not published during his lifetime, only being discovered 40 years after his death.

 
This version was arranged especially for the Onsom musicians and inspired by YouTube channel, The Piano Guys.

"Für Elise" soloists are Neil Wei (Bass Clarinet), Max Li (Violoncello) and Marcel Schumacher (Harp).

Neil began as a student in the Band Basics course, and quickly was a valuable member in the Jazz Band, and then Rising Band and joined Onsom as an inagural member.  Max joined the Allegra Strings last year, and is now the Cello Leader of the Onsom Orchestra.  Marcel has been playing harp for many years and joined the ASA program last year as an Onsom Orchestra musician and guest Caprice artist.

All three students performed at the Hong Kong Philharmonic 50th Anniversary Fundraising Concert in February, Neil and Max with the Onsom X Phil Orchestra, and Marcel in a solo duet.

Max 

Neil

Marcel