Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn
“Wedding March” in C major, written in 1842, is one of the best known of the pieces from his suite of incidental music (Op. 61) to Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is one of the most frequently used wedding marches.
Overture from H.M.S. Pinafore by Arthur Sullivan
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London on 25 May 1878, and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical theatre piece up to that time. H.M.S. Pinafore was Gilbert and Sullivan‘s fourth operatic collaboration and their first international sensation.
Largo from Renaissance Symphony by Marius Herea
The 2nd movement of Symphony No. 1, subtitled the Renaissance Symphony, is written by 21st century composer, Marius Herea. Herea originally hailed from Romania, but later became a Canadian citizen. He writes music for orchestra, piano, and other genres in a Romantic style reminiscent of Brahms, Franck, and Bruckner. The Columbia County Orchestra began performing works of Herea in 2023.
Call Me Ishmael from Moby Dick Suite by Christopher Gordon
One movement (Call Me Ishmael) from the mini-TV series Moby Dick, which starred Patrick Stewart. This suite is considered possibly the greatest score ever written for TV. Moby Dick is a literary classic written by Herman Melville.
Salute to American Jazz by Sammy Nestico
Sammy Nestico, staff arranger for the U. S. Army Band in Washington, DC included these American jazz classics: A Night in Tunisia, St. Louis Blues March, It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing, and Birdland.
Light Cavalry Overture by Franz von Suppe’
Overture to Franz von Suppé’s operetta Light Cavalry, premiered in Vienna in 1866. Although the whole operetta is rarely performed or recorded, the overture is one of Suppé’s most popular compositions, and has achieved a quite distinct life of its own, divorced from the opera of which it originally formed a part.
Danse Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saens
Samson and Delilah (French: Samson et Dalila), Op. 47, is a grand opera in three acts and four scenes by Camille Saint-Saëns to a French libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire. It was first performed in Weimar at the Grossherzogliches (Grand Ducal) Theater (now the Staatskapelle Weimar) on 2 December 1877 in a German translation. The opera is based on the Biblical tale of Samson and Delilah found in Chapter 16 of the Book of Judges in the Old Testament.
Finale from Symphony No. 4 by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36, was written between 1877 and 1878. Its first performance was at a Russian Musical Society concert in Moscow on February 22 (or the 10th using the calendar of the time), 1878, with Nikolai Rubinstein as conductor. In Central Europe it sometimes receives the nickname “Fatum”, or “Fate”.
The 4th movement being performed today, is also known as the Finale.
Festive Overture by Dmitri Shostakovich
At the time the Festive Overture was composed, Shostakovich was engaged with the Bolshoi Theatre as a musical consultant. According to Lev Lebedinsky, the commission resulted from an impromptu visit to the composer’s apartment by Vassili Nebolsin, who came to express the Bolshoi’s urgent need of a celebratory work on short notice. With only three days to meet the deadline, Shostakovich agreed to provide an appropriate work and immediately began to compose the Festive Overture. Within an hour, Nebolsin began to send couriers to the composer’s apartment to pick up the score page by completed page, who then took them to the Bolshoi’s music copyists in order to prepare the parts for performance.