Due to a strike by Carnegie Hall's stagehands, represented by IATSE/Local One (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees), tonight's performance has been cancelled.
PROGRAM:
There may not be actual fireworks on 57th Street to greet the opening of Carnegie Hall's 122nd season, but the Philadelphia Orchestra and its young French-Canadian maestro, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, have put together a program offering musical sparks aplenty for the venue's gala season opener.
The evening begins with Tchaikovsky's Slavonic March, op. 31, a lively selection that shows off the composer's gift for brilliant orchestration. It's a very smart bookend paired with their choice of a concluding piece: Bolero by Ravel, which, with its unchanging melody and rhythms, stands as a primer in how to show off individual instruments in the orchestra through magnificent manipulation of texture and dynamics. And color and verve continue to hold the limelight with the boisterous "Bacchanale" from Saint-Saëns' opera Samson et Dalila.
Meanwhile, the Fabulous Philadelphians have invited two red-hot stars to their party. Violinist Joshua Bell will perform Saint-Saëns' luxuriant Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28 as well as Ravel's Tzigane, a work that demands the most virtuosic of soloists. And the classically trained jazz phenomenon Esperanza Spalding will play arrangements of three selections from her beautiful 2010 album Chamber Music Society, taking the intimate, salon-sized concept behind that project — marrying classical chamber music to a jazz idiom — onto a much bigger stage with the orchestra.
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