Peace Meets West: Barber, Wagner, and a New Piece By William Harvey

Enrique Diemecke, music director & conductor
William Harvey, violin

Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings 
William Harvey, Seven Decisions of Gandhi 
Richard Wagner
 Die Walküre, WWV 86b (Ride of the Valkyries)
 Götterdämmerung: Siegfried’s Death and Funeral Music
 Prelude to Tristan und Isolde
 Prelude to Parsifal 

William Harvey, a Flint-born violinist, composer, and conductor has traveled the world collecting cultural music experiences that have impacted his perspective as both a performer and composer. He returns to Flint to perform his original composition Seven Decisions of Gandhi, and will give unique insight into the piece as host of the pre-concert talk. To compliment the revelation of new work that celebrates Eastern cultural traditions, the concert will open with Barber’s Adagio for Strings and conclude with some of Wagner’s most familiar pieces, all staples of the Western canon.

Where have I heard this before?  
Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings is frequently used in film to augment dramatic scenes, from Elephant Man (1980) to Platoon (1986) and Amélie (2001), bits of the score have been used in dozens of film and TV moments since the 1970s.

Richard Wagner’s music is a popular film choice to compliment the intensity of war and tragedy. Perhaps most memorably, The Ride of the Valkyries opens the Francis Ford Coppola film Apocalypse Now (1979), as a helicopter attacks a Vietnamese Village.