Dream and Reality—Fall Concert by the Freiburg Wind Orchestra

On Saturday, October 17, at 7:30 p.m., the Freiburg Wind Orchestra will perform its fall program, “Dream and Reality,” at the Forum Merzhausen. Under the baton of conductor Miguel Etchegoncelay, the orchestra will perform “D’un matin de printemps” by Prix de Rome winner Lili Boulanger, arranged by François Branciard. Much like our autumn mornings at this time of year, the fascinating young composer set to music her experience of a spring morning—a bit misty and mysterious, yet filled with sunny cheerfulness. Nigel Hess is the long-time composer for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and in his work *Shakespeare Pictures*, he explores *Much Ado About Nothing*, *The Winter’s Tale*, and *Julius Caesar*: quarrelsome, fairy-tale-like, and grand. Frank Ticheli, who recently led a WASBE conducting workshop with the Freiburg Wind Orchestra at the BDB Academy in Staufen, encounters muses in his musicalized dreams in *Fantastic Dreams*, lingers meditatively in Elysium, and experiences a turbulent flight on a magic carpet before ending up in an old black-and-white Hollywood film. Impressively set to music and varied in its execution. The concert evening is rounded out with Thomas Doss’s *Symphony of Freedom*, in which the renowned Austrian composer addresses the conflicts of our time and his hope for a better world, masterfully incorporating Beethoven quotations.

The Freiburg Wind Orchestra, which took second place in the concert competition at last year’s German Music Festival as the best German top-tier orchestra, consists of about 60 musicians from Freiburg and the surrounding region who are dedicated to symphonic wind music at a high artistic level. This past spring, the orchestra made a name for itself with a sold-out performance of *Carmina Burana* at the Konzerthaus Freiburg.