Join us on Sunday, June 14 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1, and Monday, June 15 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2 when The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert brings you a colorful program of Ravel, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky form the 2025/2026 season.
Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the orchestra in Maurice Ravel’s whimsical Mother Goose Suite to open the program, and closes with a complete performance of Igor Stravinsky’s revolutionary ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps (“The Rite of Spring”). In between, pianist Seong-Jin Cho is the soloist in Dmitri Shostakovich’s witty and ironic Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 35.
In 1910, Ravel completed his original version of Mother Goose: a set of piano duets intended for the young children of close friends. He based them on old French fairy tales. The next year, he arranged the pieces as a suite for orchestra, putting his lavish gift for inventive and expressive orchestral color to full use. Four of the suite’s five movements represent specific tales: Sleeping Beauty; Tom Thumb; Laideronette, Empress of Pagodes; and Beauty and the Beast. For the finale, titled “The Fairy Garden” it’s not entirely clear what specific story Ravel had in mind. But when he later expanded this suite into a larger score for ballet, the scenario for this music returned to Sleeping Beauty, depicting her awakening in the presence of her destined prince.
Seong-Jin Cho, a frequent and popular visitor to The Philadelphia Orchestra, is featured in the Piano Concerto No.1 by Shostakovich. Unusually for a piano concerto, this work has a very prominent solo part for trumpet as well, and this performance spotlights the orchestra’s newly appointed principal trumpet, James Vaughen, in that role. Shostakovich wrote this concerto in 1933, when his star had risen high in Soviet music. His dry and ironic humor is much in evidence, even if it takes on a frenetic or hysterical quality at times. He also parodies some well-known tunes, quoting Haydn, Beethoven, Stravinsky — and himself.
The culmination of this concert is Le Sacre du Printemps (“The Rite of Spring”). Igor Stravinsky penned this legendary ballet score in 1913, and it famously caused a riot at its premiere that year. It was the composer’s third collaboration with the innovative Ballets Russes, based in Paris. Audiences were accustomed to being surprised and challenged by the riveting productions of this famous troupe, which brought together superb dancers and choreographers, groundbreaking visual artists, and composers at the leading edge of contemporary music.
But The Rite of Spring went a step further than some were able to take. It could have been Stravinsky’s complex and radical music that shocked the audience, or the daring, even scandalous choreography. Or perhaps the brutal scenario of human sacrifice to propitiate the god of spring was the flashpoint. Or all three. It hardly matters: The Rite of Spring became an instant legend. There are two sections. In the first, an ancient pagan tribe celebrates the glories of spring through ritual dances. In the second, a chosen maiden gradually emerges for the climactic sacrifice.
The broadcast features illuminating conversations with music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and with the orchestra’s new principal trumpet, James Vaughen.
PROGRAM
Ravel: Mother Goose Suite
Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No. 1 in c minor, Op. 35
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Seong-Jin Cho, piano
James Vaughen, trumpet
Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts, every Sunday at 1 PM 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 PM on WRTI HD-2. Listen for up to two weeks after broadcast on WRTI Replay or at The Philadelphia Orchestra On Demand.
