WRTI 90.1 made history when I traveled halfway around the world in May of 2016 to join the Philadelphia Orchestra in Hong Kong, a major stop on the Orchestra’s Asia tour.
There, with the help of a broadcast engineer from RTHK Radio 4 Hong Kong, I produced the first live international radio broadcast from Hong Kong. On May 19th, 2016, as Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted the Symphony No. 2 by Brahms and Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade, at the Hong Kong Cultural Center, you heard it live here in Philadelphia.
And history will be made again this month when I will again join The Philadelphia Orchestra in Hamburg, Vienna, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem, on May 29th, and June 1st, 4th, and 5th, for live broadcasts of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2 (“The Age of Anxiety”), with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4!
This week, in anticipation of these performances, WRTI’s Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcast will air a repeat performance, for the first time since 2016, of that first Hong Kong broadcast.
This was the Orchestra’s first visit to the island in 11 years, and these were stunning performances before a thrilled Hong Kong audience.
Don’t miss it, this Sunday, May 20th from 1 to 3:20 pm, exactly two years after the historic live Hong Kong broadcast, exactly as it was then heard, on WRTI 90.1, the WRTI mobile app, and streaming worldwide at wrti.org!
PROGRAM:
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade
INTERMISSION
Brahms: Symphony No.2
Hong Kong Cultural Center, May 19, 2016
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Gregg Whiteside is producer and host of The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts, every Sunday at 1 pm on WRTI 90.1, streaming online at WRTI.org, and on the WRTI mobile app! Listen again on Mondays at 7 pm on WRTI HD-2.
The Philadelphia Orchestra In Concert broadcasts on WRTI are brought to you, in part, by Penn Medicine. The Penn approach to treating hip and knee arthritis gets patients back to enjoying life again. More information.
