Join us on Sunday, November 15th at 1 PM on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, November 16th at 7 PM on WRTI HD-2, for one of the highlights of the 2019-2020 season, as we revisit Gil Shaham’s performance with the Philadelphians at Verizon Hall a year ago – on November 30th, 2019 – of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto!
Guest conductor Susanna Mälkki returned to The Philadelphia Orchestra podium for this performance.
(Mr. Shaham will perform Vivaldi's The Four Seasons on The Philadelphia Orchestra’s digital stage on Thursday, November 19th. Check out the details here!)
Also on the broadcast program, Prokofiev’s Symphony Number 5, and a first-ever Philadelphia Orchestra performance by the contemporary French composer Betsy Jolas: A Little Summer Suite.
This concert was part of The Philadelphia Orchestra’s WomenNOW and BeethovenNOW celebrations.
Jolas composed her Little Summer Suite in 2015, for Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, and it’s an adventurous sonic sequence of perambulatory scenes, for very large orchestra, by a composer, now in her 90s, who is one of our rare living witnesses to the heyday of Modernism.
Then, a special treat: Beethoven’s only Violin Concerto, played by one of the foremost artists of our time, Gil Shaham. Beethoven didn’t write any cadenzas for the Violin Concerto, and Joseph Joachim’s were widely played for many years, until Fritz Kreisler’s cadenzas displaced them. Mr. Shaham plays all of Kreisler’s challenging cadenzas in this performance.
Following intermission, one of the masterpieces of the 20th century, Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, first performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra in January of 1947, with George Szell on the podium. The Philadelphians have performed the work many times, even taking it on European and American tours.
During the intermission of this concert, WRTI’s Susan Lewis speaks backstage with both Gil Shaham and Susanna Mälkki.
PROGRAM:
Jolas – A Little Summer Suite (first Philadelphia Orchestra performance)
Beethoven – Violin Concerto in D
Gil Shaham, violin
INTERMISSION
Prokofiev – Symphony No. 5 in B-flat, Op. 100
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Susanna Mälkki, 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 our mobile app! Listen again on Mondays at 7 PM on WRTI HD-2
