The hills are alive with the sounds of music. Those hills are the ones around Kerrville where the Symphony of the Hills is based. Here’s Artistic Director Gene Dowdy on their upcoming concert:
"We’ve themed it Heroes: Real and Imagined. All the music is inspired by or influenced somehow by acts of heroism, heroes or even just ideals."
Dowdy details the concert's contents:
"We’re opening the concert with Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. Sometimes common people just have to bring it," Dowdy jokes. "I love that piece of music so it’s a great way to start. [But] then we’re going to answer that with Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman. In the second half we’re going to bring the Superman March, because some of our superheroes are imaginary. The centerpiece of the program is Beethoven’s Symphony #3—Heroic Symphony—he titled it that himself.”
And here comes the interesting back story behind the Beethoven piece that's also called Eroica.
“He first dedicated it to Napoleon Bonaparte, because Napoleon was lifting the French people out of destitution and poverty. He was kind of a celebrated figure in the late eighteenth century," said Dowdy. "Then he went power crazy and they exiled him. And Beethoven went and scratched out [the dedication] and said ‘I’m going to call it the Heroic Symphony.’”
The concert happens in Kerrville this Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Cailloux Theater, a venue Dowdy calls the "jewel of the Hill Country," adding there will be a wine reception before the show. "It’s going to be a wonderful evening."
For more on the Symphony of the Hills go here.
For more on this specific performance go here.
