Festival Orchestra

After hearing Sasha Cooke sing Mahler’s Rückert Lieder on August 10, audiences may recognize some themes in tonight’s symphony. The fourth movement, the Adagietto, draws explicitly from the Lieder and is recognized as a love letter from Mahler to his wife, Alma. Leonard Bernstein famously led the New York Philharmonic in a performance of the heartbreakingly beautiful Adagietto at Robert Kennedy’s funeral service in 1968. The rest of the symphony is pretty good, too.

Don’t miss this evening of audience favorites! The celebratory program kicks off with John Williams’ iconic Olympic Fanfare, followed by Johann Strauss Jr.’s Blue Danube, recognizable from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Associate Conductor Stephanie Childress will then lead the orchestra through Wagner’s thrilling Ride of the Valkyries and Rossini’s William Tell overture. The blockbuster program concludes with Ravel’s stirring Boléro.

Many of Mahler’s symphonies depict a triumphant journey from darkness into light . . . but not this one. This is Mahler’s Tragic symphony–a name he gave it himself. The end is bitter, catastrophic, devastating, and hopeless. But it’s also a work of transcendent beauty, longing, and tenderness. Mahler described one passage as “shadowy memories of my life pass before me, like long-forgotten ghosts of departed happiness.” Please note that this program will last just under 90 minutes.

This concert offers an unusual piece: a concerto for violin, cello, and piano, performed by Festival Orchestra musicians. Few composers have tried this format, but of course Beethoven succeeded. The themes are fairly simple for Beethoven, but–then again–so is the first movement of his Moonlight Sonata, and no one complains about that. Throughout the piece, Beethoven finds elegant ways to give each instrument solo turns with the various melodies, including throughout the sunny finale. The program opens with Jessie Montgomery’s Strum, a piece that, in the composer’s words, “draws on American folk idioms and the spirit of dance and movement.”