Songs My Mother Taught Me

YMM is honored to dedicate this concert to Jim Paoletti, a figure who nurtured more than 2,600 young musicians from the Monterey Peninsula as Music Director of Orchestra in the Schools. 

Between the tender, playful melodies of The Emperor Waltz by Johann Strauss II and the exuberant grandeur of Joseph Haydn’s London Symphony, nostalgic childhood feelings are sure to be stirred. Following this, Concerto Competition winner Benjamin Goldoust will bring to the stage a fiery third movement from Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor. 

The first half of the concert comes to an end with students from Orchestra in the Schools joining us on stage as we dedicate this performance of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. 

The Honors Orchestra opens the second half of the concert with the lush sounds of the French countryside in Bizet’s L’Arlésienne Suite No. 2. Though pleasing and innocent at the outset, the piece takes us through dramatic moments of intense passion, envy, and delirium. 

Nestled in the heart of this concert is Dvořák’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me.” Though we will hear it without lyrics today, the song tells of a woman who recalls that her mother would cry while singing to her—and how she herself cannot help but weep as she sings to her own child. 

We conclude the concert with music from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess, a profound depiction of maternal love in the face of difficult circumstances.