Festival Orchestra

Fans of Beethoven may bristle at the suggestion, but there’s a sizable contingent that views Brahms’s Fourth Symphony as the very embodiment of the symphonic ideal. Precisely constructed, it displays Brahms’s absolutely mastery of the form. Filled with beautiful tunes and waves of romantic emotion, it also remains steadfastly earnest, even austere. Brahms recognized this quality, writing from his mountain retreat near Vienna that his symphony “tastes of the climate here. The cherries don’t ripen in these parts; you wouldn’t eat them!” Pay particular attention to the finale, a masterful homage to one of Bach’s chaconnes—a stately dance with 32 variations over a repeating bass line. It’s brilliant.

Conductor Jacomo Bairos returns to Sun Valley (he previously conducted The Villalobos Brothers in 2021) with a program inspired by Latin dance music. Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Miami’s Nu Deco Ensemble, Bairos is known for merging classical music with a wide range of styles, composers, and artists.  For Pops Night, Bairos has assembled a group including Joachim Horsley (piano), Luca Alemanno (Bass), Yonathan “Morocho” Gavidia (percussion), and Murphy Aucamp (drums).  Their program will feature jazzy takes on recognizable tunes as well as impossible-to-resist Latin dance songs that will have you tapping your feet or perhaps dancing in the aisles (and on the lawn!).

Home to some of the most popular and recognizable tunes in classical music, Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto was an instant success and remains one of the most-performed orchestra pieces today. It will be in good hands (apologies) with Olga Kern, who won first prize at the Rachmaninoff International Piano competition at age 17 and remains the only woman to win the Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in the last 50 years. The concert opens with Reena Esmail’s Testament, which features traditional Hindustani melodies and easily demonstrates why Esmail’s music is receiving so much play these days.

The Summer Season concludes with two pieces from Richard Strauss: his tone poem Death and Transfiguration and the suite from his opera Der Rosenkavalier. Tone poems are compositions that relate to stories in the “real world,” such as a hike in the alps in Eine Alpensinfonie. This one explores mystery of death and what lies beyond. Strauss wrote: “It occurred to me to present in the form of a tone poem the dying hours of a man who had striven towards the highest idealistic aims, maybe indeed those of an artist.” Der Rosenkavalier gives us the finest music from Strauss’s happy, funny, and sentimental opera. Listen for the famous waltz towards the end – a beautiful but also funny bit because waltzes didn’t really exist during the time of the opera’s setting in Mozart’s Vienna. Critics of the day gave Strauss a hard time for that, but we get to enjoy it.