Harlan D. Parker, conductor

Richard Strauss: Serenade in E-flat major, Op. 7
Ruth Gipps: Wind Sinfonietta
Katahj Copley: Serenade for Wind Nonet
Igor Stravinsky: Octet for Wind Instruments

Harlan D. Parker leads the Peabody Wind Ensemble through a program that highlights the breadth of a wind band’s emotive range. Richard Strauss was 18 years old when he wrote Serenade in E-flat in 1881, modestly indebted to Mozart’s melodicism and lyricism, while contemporary composer Katahj Copley’s Serenade for Wind Nonet uses the serenade’s celebratory form to explore the recovery following heartbreak. Ruth Gipps’ Sinfonietta is an unabashedly Romantic later work, and Igor Stravinsky’s Octet (1923) uses the uncommon instrumentation of four woodwind and four brass instruments to explore pre-Romantic ideas and forms, becoming an early example of neoclassicism.