Join us on Sunday, July 19 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, July 20 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2 as The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert brings you a program of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich from the 2025/2026 season.
Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali makes his debut with The Philadelphia Orchestra, and Philadelphia favorite Hilary Hahn returns with her interpretation of Prokofiev’s famous First Violin Concerto in D major. The program includes the Symphony No. 6 in B minor by Shostakovich, and opens with a perpetual favorite, Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio italien.
In 1880, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was taking an extended vacation in Rome during the Carnival period before Lent. He spent his time there soaking up the frenetic hilarity and abandon of the Carnival crowds, the folk tunes and dances he heard in the street, and the bugle calls of an army barracks located near his lodgings. All these found a musical home in what Tchaikovsky initially called his “Italian Fantasy.” The work was sketched out before Carnival was over – in fact, by then, Tchaikovsky admitted relief to be rid of what he called the “madness and devilry of the Carnival crowds.”
Hilary Hahn is featured in Sergei Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto, a product of the composer's mid-twenties. He already had a reputation in pre-Revolutionary Russia: brash, modernist, and prodigiously gifted. But political upheaval was brewing, and soon after completing the violin concerto, Prokofiev made the decision to leave Russia. Thus began an odyssey that took the composer from Tokyo to New York City to Paris. The violin concerto was in his luggage, but remained unperformed until the early 1920s. The premiere took place in Paris in 1923, when Prokofiev shared the program with Igor Stravinsky. Comparing the two, Parisian audiences and critics found Prokofiev’s music tame — too tuneful, and not challenging enough to suit their avant-garde tastes. At least in Paris, Prokofiev was no longer an enfant terrible. But even though
Parisians might have wanted to hear something spikier in 1923, they were not the norm. And this concerto remains immediately appealing today.
The program closes with the Sixth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich, a relative rarity, which Santtu-Matias Rouvali calls “the most positive symphony he wrote.” The composer once told an interviewer that he wanted this work to “embody the moods associated with spring, joy, and youth.” So it does. And yet the work begins with a lengthy, introspective slow movement that displays the strong influence of Gustav Mahler. Then comes a lighthearted scherzo with boisterous passages. The finale is a speedy march interrupted by a more restrained central section highlighting several soloists in the orchestra.
PROGRAM:
Tchaikovsky: Capriccio italien
Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Santtu-Matias Rouvali, conductor
Hilary Hahn, violin
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.
