April 2025
View Past Events

Program Notes | Dec 5–8, 2019

Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto
By Laurie Shulman ©2019

ONE-MINUTE NOTES

Anna Clyne: Within Her Arms

This meditation for strings is an elegy of love and loss, written in memory of the composer’s mother.

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3

A pulsating orchestra opens this concerto, supporting the piano’s stark, straightforward theme in octaves. Rachmaninoff spins wonders from this deceptively simple melody! Blood and thunder, passion and pathos course through the outer movements. The Intermezzo provides welcome respite, setting the stage for the firestorm of the finale.

Dvořák: Symphony No. 8

Sometimes called Dvořák’s “Pastoral” Symphony, the Eighth breathes the transparent, wholesome spirit of the Bohemian countryside. Birdcalls and a wistful calm in the Adagio evoke the peace of the composer’s summer home.