Join us on Sunday, May 3 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, May 4 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2 as The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert brings you a program of Beethoven and Brahms plus a suite by William Grant Still restored to its original form through the efforts of the Philadelphia Orchestra. In this program from the 2025/2026 season, music and artistic director Yannick Nézet-Séguin is on the podium, and pianist Emanuel Ax is featured as soloist.
William Grant Still was a rare example of a 20th-century African-American composer who achieved significant and steady success during his lifetime. His 1947 suite Wood Notes is reasonably well known as a four-movement work for chamber orchestra. But Still’s original was significantly different. Scored for full orchestra, it was meant to conclude with a contemplative and beautiful fifth movement, but Still’s publisher insisted that he scale back the scoring and drop the finale. The result was performed and received as a pleasant set of nature pictures: a singing river, an autumn night, the moon at dusk, and a perky evocation of birds called "Whippoorwill's Shoes.”
Thanks to The Philadelphia Orchestra’s assistant conductor Austin Chanu and principal librarian Nicole Jordan, there is now a performing edition of the work as Still originally intended it: for full orchestra, with its extended finale back in its original place. It’s titled “Theophany” — a term which indicates God’s appearance to human beings in nature — and is a moving evocation of Still’s spiritual side, putting a completely new spin on Wood Notes as a whole. The suite was inspired by nature poems written by the Alabama-based social worker Joseph Pilcher.
The centerpiece of this concert is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, with Emanuel Ax celebrating the 50th anniversary of his debut with The Philadelphia Orchestra. Around 1800, as Beethoven wrote this concerto, he was celebrated in Vienna as a piano virtuoso, but he really wanted to be known as a composer. A major concert devoted to his latest large-scale pieces seemed like a good way to advertise his abilities. So he set to work organizing the evening. He would conduct everything, and play the piano as well. The marathon program included his first two symphonies and his new oratorio, Christ on the Mount of Olives. And he would premiere his third piano concerto.
That was a lot of music for one concert — and some of it truly was his latest music. Indeed, when he began the grueling day-long rehearsal before the evening performance, the ink was barely dry on the oratorio. For the concerto, very little ink even reached the piano score, at least according to the bewildered page turner who attempted to assist Beethoven at the performance. Whole pages of the piano part were essentially blank, as the composer relied on his memory. Fortunately, Beethoven was a celebrated improviser, too. And so is Emanuel Ax, as poetic as ever on this anniversary occasion.
This concert concludes with the Third Symphony in F major by Johannes Brahms, the least-often performed of the composer’s four symphonies. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who admits the Third is his favorite, has an explanation for its position in the shadows. “It's a rare symphony that finishes in peace, even though the last movement is full of storm and of action. But it's also very complex to play,” he notes. The symphony’s complex rhythms, concentrated form, and recurring motifs have prompted Yannick to think of the symphony as “the closest Brahms has ever been to a tone poem. And this is why we perform it without any pause” between movements. “It's one story.”
That story begins with an ascending theme, trumpeted out at the very start – F, A-flat, F, representing the initials of a personal credo for Brahms – “frei aber froh,” which is German for “free but happy.” Brahms was responding to the melancholy statement of a friend who declared he was “frei aber einsam” – “free but lonely.” And while Brahms’s theme implies a minor chord, strange for a symphony in F major, somehow it registers as something quite positive. Assertive, even heroic, it reappears in varied guises throughout all the very different movements of the symphony. By the close of the finale, the “frei aber froh” theme is transformed into something serene and even transcendent.
PROGRAM:
Still: Wood Notes
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in c minor, Op. 37
Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Emanuel Ax, piano
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.
