Five Humorous Pieces
Hubert Leonard 1819-1892
Narrator: Scott Budman, KNTV News Anchorman
Joseph Gold, violin soloist

In his youth,  Hubert Leonard studied at the Brussels and Paris Conservatories and performed the region and championed the performances of chamber music.  He was known as a virtuoso violinist, and one of the outstanding teachers in Paris where he also composed..   He advocated the musical compositions of Brahms, Saint-Saens, Faure, Lalo and d'Indy.  Besides his own compositions, he is known for the cadenzas written for the Beethoven Violin Concertos. 

Leonard wrote Five Humorous Pieces several years before Saint-Saens' wrote Le Carnival des Animaux (The Carnival of the Animals).  Although Saint-Saens suppressed performances of Carnival during his lifetime, and refused to have most of it published because he thought it too frivolous and likely to harm his reputation as a serious composer, Leonard's Five Humorous Pieces, along with most of his other works, did not develop an international following and has not survived primarily due to a lack of unique qualities for the time. 

Five Humorous Pieces musically depict five vignettes.  They consist of:

1. Rooster and Hens
2. In the Dark Forrest
3. Cat and Mice
4. Donkey and Driver
5. The Serenade of the Bellicose Rabbit

Mr. Gold has provided not only the orchestration (it was originally written as a chamber work), but added narration for each section so as to "prime" the audience for the content of each piece.  He has drawn from Ogden Nash and Saint-Saens' Animaux (Rooster and Hens) and others as well as his own creative poetry, and will be performing the violin solo. 

The orchestra would also like to gratefully acknowledge and thank Mr. Scott Budman, of KNTV for his participation as narrator for this world premier.

Program Note by Josh Cohen