Settle back in your comfortable seat at the Chilliwack Cultural Centre on May 25 to hear the Chilliwack Metropolitan Orchestra in concert with the Chilliwack Metropolitan Youth Orchestra for A Night in Vienna.
The program for the CMO/YO's final concert for 2012/13 is a wonderful selection of waltzes, polkas and overtures.
Chilliwack violinist David Voth, is the featured soloist for the CMO, playing Romance No.1 by Ludwig Van Beethoven.
A local music teacher who picked up a violin at the age of three, Voth is frequently in the CMO concert master chair or co-conducting the CMYO.
He will be performing the Romance No. 1 on his uncle's Friesen violin built in Yarrow by a Luthier in the 1950s.
"I love how Beethoven uses double-stops on the solo violin throughout the piece," said Voth.
"The orchestra is silent during these interludes, and it's as though the world stands still while these two melodies are woven on a single instrument.
"That epitomizes a Romance for me."
Though dignified and relatively quiet throughout the body of the composition, it concludes with three fortissimo chords for soloist and orchestra.
The non-profit Chiliwack Metropolitan Orchestra and Youth Orchestra have now completed five years of performing for Chilliwack audiences with more than 80 members when on stage together.
Artistic Director and conductor Johan Louwersheimer said he wanted to present a light and entertaining program for the ultimate concert of the season.
Music by the Strauss family and Franz Von Suppe perfectly fit the bill.
"It's very popular and fun music; a nice way to end the whole year of playing and it sets the mood for summer."
Maestro Louwersheimer, who founded the Abbotsford Symphony, also directs the Seattle Octava Chamber Orchestra, the Handel Society of Music and was recently guest conductor for Orchestra Seattle and the Seattle Chamber Singers.
Waltzes and polkas abound. The Jockey, Hunt, and Bandit Polkas, evoke enjoyable daytime images. The Blue Danube was like going for a walk in a beautiful park.
"The waltzes and polkas were the two dances popular at the time in dance halls. One was more crazy and fast, and the other more stately and romantic."
The second half speaks of a more formal and fancy evening of dinner and the opera perhaps. There's the Chitchat Polka, and the Thunder and Lightening one, where one can imagine a party running inside to seek shelter in a rainstorm.
Then as a finale, the Radetzky March, says the Maestro, since that's the one that everybody loves.
A Night in Vienna, Chilliwack Cultural Centre, May 25 at 7:30 p.m. at Cultural Centre, $25/$15, or Chilliwack Metropolitan Orchestra Facebook page for a draw for a pair of free tickets, or chilliwackmetropolitan.com or 604-391-SHOW (7469).