North Dakota’s Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra will perform the world premiere of René Clausen’s Before the Whirlwind for orchestra and 100-voice chorus on April 27, joined by the Fargo-Moorhead Choral Artists and North Dakota State University Concert Choir. The work was commissioned by the orchestra in 2018 and explores the primeval beginnings of the state’s Red River Valley. Clausen will conduct the program, which also will include music by Copland and Wagner. Clausen, a professor of choral music at Concordia College in Moorhead, describes Before the Whirlwind as “a tone poem for orchestra and chorus that attempts to describe and illuminate the various periods of geological time. Presented as one continuous movement, the work is comprised of six sub-sections with evocative titles that demarcate shifts in geologic history: The Primordial Land, The Glaciers, The Mighty Lake, The Emerging Land—Prairie Dance, The Buffalo, and The Native Americans.”
Posted April 19, 2019
