Join us on Sunday, July 12 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1, and Monday, July 13 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2 when The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert series brings you Manuel de Falla’s flamenco-flavored El amor brujo, plus concertmaster David Kim in Tchaikovsky’s beloved Violin Concerto. Rafael Payare, music director of the Montreal and San Diego symphonies, is on the podium.
Devil’s Promenade by Native American composer Louis Ballard opens the concert. The title is the name of a rural stretch of road in the Ozarks, where Ballard was born in 1931. Back then, the site was a gathering place for members of his Quapaw tribe. There they met for powwows and social occasions. Ballard grew up steeped in these traditions, while also pursuing classical music studies in percussion and composition. He collected Native American songs and incorporated them in his own works. For years he taught percussion at Colorado’s Aspen Music Festival and School, and also directed music at the Institute of Native American Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico — both fruitful regions to explore indigenous traditions that differed from his own. He composed Devil’s Promenade in 1973 as an homage to his birthplace, and it’s largely driven by Native American percussion instruments. “The piece is great. It’s full of color,” notes Payare. “The percussionists are having a blast.”
At the center of the program, David Kim has a solo turn in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. There may be no violin concerto more universally loved, but it took a while for audiences and eminent soloists to warm to the work — ironically, because Tchaikovsky deliberately set out to write a truly beautiful work that would be attractive to listeners and performers. He wasn’t trying to break new ground, make an unprecedented statement, or challenge anyone. And yet initially, no one seemed pleased with it. The violinist he hoped would premiere the work, Josif Kotek, didn’t like the slow movement, so Tchaikovsky wrote a new one. Then came the premiere, scheduled to feature a different soloist, the celebrated violinist Leopold Auer. But Auer declared the concerto unplayable, and that performance was scuttled.
And so it went for several years; the performances that did take place brought scathing reviews. But eventually Auer himself became the concerto’s most fervent champion. An important teacher of the next generation of violin virtuosi, he introduced the work to his students – Jascha Heifetz, Efrem Zimbalist, and Nathan Milstein among them – who would ultimately perform it worldwide. The concerto may have been deemed unplayable at first, but today, notes Kim, “just about any 12- or 13-year-old worth their salt is going to learn this as they develop and go through all the standard violin repertoire.”
The concert closes with El amor brujo (“Love, the Magician”) by Manuel de Falla, in its rarely heard original version from 1915. It’s a series of dramatic scenes, both narrated and sung by a flamenco singer. The story concerns a Romani, or gypsy, love triangle. A widow is haunted by her dead husband, who had been unfaithful to her. She feels cursed by his visits back from the dead, and is seeking to free herself so she can unite with the man she truly loves. El amor brujo is the melodramatic story of her attempt to break the curse.
Today El amor brujo is generally performed almost as a mini-concert opera, in the composer’s final version from 1924. But that version didn’t yet exist back in 1922, when The Philadelphia Orchestra introduced this work to America, prompting Payare to resurrect the work’s original 1915 version. It combines the flamenco tradition of the “deep song” or cante jondo, with dramatic narration of the creepy ghost story. Over the course of a harrowing night, the heroine attempts to cast a spell over her husband’s ghost. All ends well, and as dawn breaks, she and her lover are reunited. This performance features narrator and singer Marina Heredia, a celebrated exponent of flamenco “deep song” who has made a specialty of El amor brujo.
PROGRAM:
Ballard: Devil’s Promenade
Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
Falla: El Amor brujo (“Love, the Magician”)
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Rafael Payare, conductor
David Kim, violin
Marina Heredia, narrator and vocalist
WRTI PRODUCTION TEAM:
Melinda Whiting: Host
Alex Ariff: Senior Producer
Tyler McClure: Broadcast Engineer
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.
