Star-Spangled Symphony

The Star-Spangled Symphony featured the U.S. Navy Band Chanters Chorus, O’Malley’s March and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Sunday June 17.

We heard a world premiere of Overture for 2012 by Baltimore born Philip Glass, premiered at the same time in Toronto, Canada. 

Inside Joseph Myerhoff Symphony Hall the flag with 15 stars and 15 stripes back-dropped the stage for a sold-out crowd of 15 dollar ticket holders. 

Overture for 2012 reached for the stars and didn’t look back, in a peaceful reflective sublime quiet anthem that might have been asking where we will be in 2212.

Music by John Williams and Aaron Copland painted a post-1812 American landscape.

But the finale brought us back to Europe in 1812 as romanticized by Tchaikovsky in 1882 when cannons and church bells and dueling anthems from Napoleon’s France and the Tsar’s Russia fought the invasion of and defense of Moscow. The BSO and the Chanters combined their own forces to battle brilliantly, leaving us in 1812 when our own war 200 years ago was about to begun and reminding us that the bicentennial celebration has only just begun! 

How will the city and state outdo this weekend’s extravaganza in 2013 and 2014 when that war reaches the shores of the Chesapeake? 

The Myerhoff opened in 1982; Tchaikovsky performed on Charles Street at the Lyceum Theatre in 1891. 

Perhaps John Adams could provide us with an opera by September of 2014 in which Dolly Madison escapes the burning White House, Sam Smith commands the militia at North Point and runaway slave William Williams is wounded while defending us during the Bombardment of Ft. McHenry!