WRTI continues a special mini-series on The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert, “From the Vault,” on Sunday, Feb 16 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1, and Monday, Feb 17 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2. This week’s archival performances from 2019, conducted by music and artistic director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, include generous excerpts from Sergei Prokofiev’s legendary ballet Romeo and Juliet, as well as a recently rediscovered Funeral Song by Igor Stravinsky.
This week’s program opens with Chant funèbre, or Funeral Song, written in 1908 by a young Igor Stravinsky in memory of his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The manuscript was lost immediately after its premiere, and only unearthed in 2015. Like many a gifted composer before him, the young Stravinsky had been expected to pursue music only as a hobby. But he found his way into the orbit of Rimsky-Korsakov, a renowned teacher, and soon abandoned his law studies to study privately with Rimsky. When his teacher died in 1908, Stravinsky wrote this elegy for a memorial concert.
The rest of this week’s broadcast is devoted to another 2019 performance, offering most of Sergei Prokofiev’s legendary ballet score, Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev composed this classic ballet as he angled to return to his native Russia after an absence of more than 15 years. He had left in the wake of the communist Revolution, and established a successful career in America and Europe while the new Soviet Union took shape. By the 1930s, though, Prokofiev was feeling homesick. He started to seek opportunities in his homeland. By 1935 he was writing an evening-length work based on Shakespeare’s great tragic love story, Romeo and Juliet, for Leningrad’s Kirov Ballet. When the Kirov dropped the project, the composer salvaged the music in orchestral suites for use in the concert hall.
A staged premiere of the ballet finally took place in Czechoslovakia, and ballet companies have staged Romeo and Juliet regularly ever since. But because the full score is about two and a half hours long, this marvelous music is most often heard in concert, via the composer’s three orchestral suites. Each suite orders its excerpts according to musical effect, not to tell the story. But this Philadelphia Orchestra performance is different. We’ll hear about two thirds of the full ballet, presented in dramatic order so the audience can follow the familiar story in the music.
“From the Vault” features a broad variety of music, including several solo turns by celebrated orchestra principals and a couple of world-premieres commissioned by the orchestra. The remaining broadcasts in this mini-series of The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert will feature another celebrated ballet score — Stravinsky’s complete Firebird — as well as symphonies by Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Franz Berwald; and the world-premiere performances of concertos by Behzad Ranjbaran and David Ludwig, featuring Philadelphia Orchestra principals Jeffrey Khaner and Daniel Matsukawa.
PROGRAM:
Stravinsky: Funeral Song
Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet (excerpts)
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
WRTI PRODUCTION TEAM:
Melinda Whiting: Host
Alex Ariff: Senior Producer
Joseph Patti: Broadcast Engineer
Mel Spiegel and Kayla John: Production Assistants
Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts, every Sunday at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1, streaming at WRTI.org, on the WRTI mobile app, and on your favorite smart speaker. Listen again on Mondays at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2. Listen for up to two weeks after broadcast on WRTI Replay.
