theGOspot

This final concert of our season begins and ends with profoundly political works. Finlandia—Sibelius’s most enduringly popular work—is a bold statement of patriotism written when the composer’s homeland was under the control of Imperial Russia.

The Longview Symphony Orchestra is joined in this performance by string players from the Longview Area Youth Symphony Orchestra. Our closing work, Shostakovich’s great Symphony No.5, is a far more complex political statement by an artist who lived under the harsh artistic controls of Soviet Russia. Between these thoroughly serious pieces we play a wonderfully colorful, impressionistic suite of movements inspired by the Mother Goose tales—Ravel’s Ma mère l’oye.