100th Birthday Tribute Concert to Leroy Anderson

Today the hubby and I went to a matinee performance of our local symphony, the Brevard Symphony Orchestra, play a 100^th Birthday Tribute to Leroy Anderson (1908-1975). He is best known for writing lighthearted, short pieces for the orchestra, especially the Boston "Pops". He also wrote a Piano Concerto in C, which he withdrew at some point to make changes to but didn't finish them – another composer or composers eventually made the changes and the family rereleased the concerto to orchestras. His most famous works are probably Sleigh Ride (everyone knows that one, and most think it's a Christmas song but really it's just a winter song and, on a video clip we saw between pieces today, he said he wrote it during a summer heat wave!), and The Syncopated Clock, which you'd recognize if you heard it. There were other video clips as well, of some of Anderson's colleagues talking about him and the composer himself being interviewed and playing short bits on the piano himself.

I must say that our orchestra is absolutely terrific. Anyone in the Central Florida area should check them out sometime. The conductor was a lot of fun too. Here was the playlist (I missed the first two and part of the third due to hubby thinking I said it started at 2:30 instead of 2:00 and not taking a shower till almost 2…grr…if I had done that, he would have been SO mad. I won't go into more of that.):

• Belle of the Ball – a very elegant waltz and a very good choice to start off the show (one of the albums I have uses it first too)
  
• Jazz Pizzicato – I'm not too familiar with this one but it was one of his earlier works
  
• Blue Tango – another waltz, slower…a beautiful piece. We saw this one on the TV monitors as we walked in…nice job.
  
• The Typewriter – this one is a very cute little ditty which uses an actual old manual typewriter for the typing sounds and the return bell. The conductor said they were playing it for a children's group not long ago and none of the kids even knew what the typewriter was! LOL.
  
• Serenata – this is a more serious piece, mostly in a minor key except for the middle. It has a very Latin flavor to it. My mother has always loved this one – it was the reverse side of the 45 we had of Sleigh Ride (which was a RED record – I will have to scan it in to show you…most cool!). I know when my mother passes away, this song will choke me up when I hear it.
  
• Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in C Major – this is the one that was "dusted off" after Anderson's death. There was a guest pianist for this, playing on a Steinway grand…beautiful! 3 movements:
  
  • Allegro
    
  • Andante (which sort of flowed right out of the first part)
    
  • Allegro vivo (there was a pause between this and the Andante)
    
• (Here, they played a video clip…Anderson performed a little bit of his song "Forgotten Dreams". It is a beautiful ballad and that really got my waterworks going. Good thing I'm just getting over a cold so sniffles didn't seem so out of place…)
  
• Sleigh Ride – my favorite of all time! I don't care what season it is! They use real sleigh bells, the things that make it sound like the clip clop of a horse (LOL, not sure what they're called), and a whip instrument. There is even the horse whinny at the end. This is another piece that moves me even though it's so happy…it just reminds me of my childhood.
  

Here we had an intermission of 15 minutes or so. We got a pretzel and I found a water fountain. I had asked Nick if he wanted to share something to drink but he said no…and then when I found the water fountain he said "If you'd told me you were thirsty I would have gotten you something to drink." Typical, LOL…but he sounded sincere and it was really OK, they had Pepsi products (yuck) or bottled water (waste) and I really only needed to wash down the pretzel and the salt anyway. Now for the second half:

• Promenade – another piece I'm not really familiar with but it was nice…kind of majestic and rather short.
  
• Waltz Around the Scale – this was a Florida debut! Another work which was found amongst Anderson's papers after he died and tidied up…the family offered it to the first orchestra in each state who asked for it, and our good old BSO got it for Florida! Very light and airy and just kind of all up and down the scales as the title suggests.
  
• At this point, our conductor told us that while Anderson worked with the Boston Pops, he got to know a lot of the orchestra members quite well and he wrote some pieces designed specifically for different types of instruments. So the next several are along those lines:
  
• The Penny Whistle Song – designed for the woodwind section; flutes, clarinets, etc. Cute piece.
  
• Trumpeter's Lullaby – for the brass, of course. This one had a solo trumpet player for the slow parts and filling in during the faster ones. Another favorite of mine. A video clip before the piece was an interview with a former Boston Pops trumpeter who "thought he had muttered under his breath" one evening that he was getting tired of playing the same old stuff…and the very next day, Anderson pulled him aside and gave him this new solo to play. He played a bit of it on the video. :-)
  
• One that was not on the playlist, but preceded by another video clip: Anderson was always moved by bugle corps in the military (he served in WWII) but felt kind of bad for them because they always had to play the exact same tunes, in the exact same way. So he thought maybe they'd like to have their own tune…a "Bugler's Holiday". This song is a lot of fun and fast-paced and is played by 3 trumpet players with the orchestra backing them up. I was really happy they included this one after all.
  
• Sandpaper Ballet – Blocks with different grades of sandpaper are rubbed together by the percussionists (this is their featured song) to recreate the old soft-shoe dances of the vaudeville days. A light melody, medium tempo.
  
• Fiddle Faddle – Another all-time favorite and one most people would probably recognize, and of course, this one highlights the talents of the strings section. Very fast paced, with a plucked section in the middle. I love it! If this one doesn't get your spirits up nothing will!
  
• Home Stretch – this little piece patterned after a horse race was introduced by a video clip showing some of Anderson's colleagues (including former bandleaders Skitch Henderson and John Williams) how easy Leroy Anderson made it look to write "music for the masses"…compositions that were generally light in feeling and nature, but spoke to everyone. I'm sure today's audiences are much more jaded, but his work still has a lot of appeal…and personally, it reminds me of home and family.
  
• An encore! I had been really disappointed that "The Syncopated Clock" was not on the playlist, but after the conductor had bowed and walked offstage, he said that they wanted to play one more piece that showed exactly how important a conductor was to his orchestra…and then he walked offstage again and let them play it on their own! LOL! (They did it very well too!!)
  

I was very impressed, and except for the moments of sentimentality on my part, I had a GREAT time. If you want to hear some clips of Leroy Anderson's work, click his name at the top of the blog – someone did an official website for his centennial. Enjoy! (PS…this was the first time I found out that his first name is pronounced "le-ROY"…)