Program notes written for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
It took Holst almost four years to complete The Planets and then it was another three years before a complete performance was staged. The piece quickly became extremely popular, and the shy and humble Holst achieved a level of celebrity he never really sought nor wanted.
This violin concerto was likely premiered by Bologne with the Concert des Amateurs, and was published around 1775 by Antoine Bailleux. Look out for the sudden entry of peasant pipes and fiddles, crashing the elegant ambiance—a musical anticipation of the French Revolution to come.
In this work, Saariaho captures the sweep and depth of the winter sky, its stinging cold and clarity, the slow drift and play of the constellations as they rise and set, and the immensity of it all.
To Mussorgsky, Russianness meant gritty realism and embracing his musical intuition—or “utter technical incompetence,” as Rimsky-Korsakov called it.
Franghiz Ali-Zadeh was born in 1947 in Baku, Azerbaijan, on the coast of the Caspian Sea. Nağıllar was inspired by the flying carpet adventure in One Thousand and One Nights.
Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 is filled with warmth and measured optimism. It seems to acknowledge the heaviness of the Second World War while looking ahead to the future, and recognizing what was worth fighting for.
Ginastera’s Harp Concerto was commissioned in 1956 by Edna Phillips, the principal harpist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the first woman to be a member of that orchestra.
Just a few years before The Firebird premiered in Paris, Igor Stravinsky was an undistinguished law student in St. Petersburg wishing he was a composer instead.
Britten was motivated by pacifism in the face of war in Europe. His violin concerto is uneasy, with lyrical lines built on a dangerously unstable foundation.
Powder Her Face is a 1995 chamber opera by Thomas Adès based on Margaret Campbell, duchess of Argyll, whose real-life 1963 divorce created a sensational scandal in England.