Join us on Sunday, June 29 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, June 30 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2 as The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert brings you Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”), Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, and a rollicking opener by Michael Tilson Thomas. Guest conductor Osmo Vänskä is on the podium and Pierre-Laurent Aimard is soloist in the Ravel concerto.
The concert opens with Agnegram, a 1998 work by the venerable American musician 20th-century American composer Michael Tilson Thomas. Written in honor of a longtime patron of the San Francisco Symphony, which Tilson Thomas directed for a quarter century, this jubilant marching music includes references to jazz and a polytonal mixing of tunes reminiscent of Charles Ives. There’s a snatch of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and, to wrap things up, a mix of counterpoint and minimalism. In some ways Agnegram seems to sum up Tilson Thomas’s own broad musical tastes.
A great piano concerto of the 20th follows: Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, written in 1930 on commission from a piano virtuoso who lost his right arm in World War I. Our soloist is Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who has the full use of both his hands, but enjoys playing this concerto regardless. He notes that Ravel challenged himself “to write a piano part that sounds like it was played with two hands, though it is played only by one. So the challenge is double, so to say, and the choreography of the hand is very special, very artistically and creatively written, but very challenging for the player. This is what I like in it.” It’s for these musical and technical reasons that Ravel’s concerto has become a fixture in the repertoire.
Nicknames for symphonies of the classical era rarely originate with the composers. But “Eroica,” the name that Ludwig van Beethoven gave to his Third Symphony, is truly apt. “Heroic” perfectly describes this Symphony in E-flat major. It is heroic in scope and scale, in the loftiness of its musical ideas, and in the grandeur of its conception. When it premiered in Vienna in 1805, nothing like it had been heard before, in terms of its length, difficulty, ambition and sheer power.
Today, the Eroica is so venerated and familiar that it’s easy to forget how many barriers Beethoven broke through in this work. He confronts his listeners from the very start, with two explosive E-flat major chords. These establish the basis of the main themes of its massive first movement, which traverses a stunning spectrum of keys in an exhilarating emotional journey. The second movement is a noble funeral march expressing profound grief. The third-movement scherzo puts all sadness aside, hurtling forward with bustling good humor. The finale is a set of variations on a theme that Beethoven had used repeatedly in earlier works. Like the first movement, the finale begins with a dramatic gesture: a precipitous onrush of energy. The ingenious variations that follow range from whimsical to forceful to humorous, concluding with an exuberant coda.
PROGRAM:
Tilson Thomas: Agnegram
Ravel: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand
Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”), Op. 55
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Osmo Vänskä, conductor
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
WRTI PRODUCTION TEAM:
Melinda Whiting: Host
Alex Ariff: Senior Producer and Broadcast Engineer
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 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, accessible from the WRTI homepage (look for Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert On Demand).
