Mussorgsky, Night on Bald Mountain
Saint-Saëns, Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33
(featuring David Requiro)
Ravel, Pavane for a Dead Princess
Gershwin, An American in Paris
Join us at our season-opener for a classical roller coaster ride: from “Night on Bald Mountain,” the devilish tone-poem that played an iconic role in Disney’s innovative film “Fantasia,” to Saint-Saëns searing Cello Concerto no. 1. In the concert’s second half, Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess” returns us to serenity in time to enjoy the innocent good fun of Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” one of the few works in the repertoire to use taxi horns as a musical instrument.
Mr. Requiro has soloed with the Tokyo Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, and with numerous orchestras across North America. His Carnegie Hall debut recital at Weill Hall was followed by a critically acclaimed San Francisco Performances recital at the Herbst Theatre. Soon after making his Kennedy Center debut, Mr. Requiro also completed the cycle of Beethoven’s Sonatas for Piano and Cello at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Actively involved in contemporary music, he has collaboratedwith composers Krzysztof Penderecki and Bright Sheng and most recently gave the Dutch premiere of Pierre Jalbert’s Sonata for cello and piano at the 2010 Amsterdam Cello Biennale.
Christian Baldini, conductor
Carrie Hennessey, soprano
Mika Pelo, ‘Satellite’
Celebrated Mozart and Verdi Arias, with Carrie Hennessey, soprano
Schumann, Symphony No. 1 in B-flat Major Op. 38 ‘Spring’
What a delight it is to share with you a program featuring wonderful composers that I admire and that I feel very close to. Mika Pelo is a Swedish composer of great imagination and breadth of expression. His compositions are performed internationally, and he is also a Berkeley resident, which makes featuring his music to local audiences even more exciting. Verdi and Mozart are two of the most important operatic geniuses, and we will be featuring them with the phenomenal soprano Carrie Hennessey. Dramatic, surprising and tender music is going to prepare you for Schumann’s energetic and beautiful Symphony No. 1, which was sketched in just five days, and completed shortly thereafter. In it, Schumann found a fresh way to describe through his music a poem by Adolph Böttger, whose last stanza reads “In the valley spring blooms forth!” — Christian Baldini