Join us on Sunday, March 3 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, March 4 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2 as The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert brings you Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (“Titan”), as well as a new piano concerto composed by Jimmy López Bellido for Javier Perianes, who makes his debut with the Philadelphians in this performance. Guest conductor Rafael Payare, music director of the Montreal and San Diego symphonies, is on the podium.
The exciting young Peruvian composer Jimmy López Bellido has earned advanced degrees from Finland’s Sibelius Academy and the University of California at Berkeley. But his music remains, as he puts it, “definitely rooted in Peru.” And his piano concerto dedicated to Javier Perianes, titled Ephemerae, is also rooted in the composer’s fascination with synesthesia. That’s a phenomenon in which some individuals experience two senses simultaneously. In music we often encounter synesthesia as an association of specific sonorities with specific colors. But this Piano Concerto associates sonorities with aromas.
As the composer writes, “Fragrances may be among the most fleeting and ethereal sensations that most sentient beings experience in their daily lives. Although elusive, they are capable of making lasting impressions and remaining in our memory long after they are gone.” Ephemerae unfolds in three movements, each highlighting a different world of scents, expressed through a dazzling variety of orchestral and pianistic color.
The first movement, “Bloom,” evokes the first aromas after winter gives way to spring, and then the full freshness of the season. The middle movement, “Primal Forest,” explores what the composer calls the “lush and dark dwellings of musk and wooden undertones” of the forest. The finale, “Spice Bazaar,” combines exotic scents ranging from cinnamon to sandalwood to jasmine. Throughout the concerto, the virtuosity of the piano part is complemented by rich and varied orchestral colors.
The program concludes with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D major, sometimes referred to as the “Titan.” When he embarked on the composition of his first symphony, Mahler had been occupied with smaller forms, principally songs. To us today, it can seem that the massive Symphony No. 1 came almost out of nowhere. The explanation lies partly in the symphony’s long gestation period. Most of the work was composed in 1888 in a rush of inspiration; Mahler would write that the music “virtually gushed like a mountain stream.”
The result premiered the following year in Budapest, with the composer on the podium. Mahler was a very gifted conductor, and was well known in that city, as the director of the Royal Hungarian Opera. So it’s reasonable to assume that the performance faithfully reflected his intentions. But the audience was simply baffled. The work was enormous at over an hour long, and its five-movement form seemed sprawling to critics. So after the premiere, Mahler immediately began revisions. He also tried to help audiences along by providing a name – the “Titan” – plus descriptive titles for the individual movements and brief programmatic explanations for them as well.
Further performances in 1893 and 1894 brought more revisions. Mahler dropped the second movement, which survives today as a freestanding orchestral work titled “Blumine.” And he dropped the names and explanations, too. By 1900 — 12 years after the composer’s initial inspiration — the work finally reached the form we know today. Mahler unveiled the new version of his symphony, leading the Vienna Philharmonic, and this time the critical and audience reaction revealed interest and sparked enthusiastic debates about the work’s merits, rather than sheer bewilderment. And of course more than a century on, it has become one of the most loved of all symphonies, an acknowledged masterwork.
PROGRAM:
López Bellido: Ephemerae, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D major (“Titan”)
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Rafael Payare, conductor
Javier Perianes, piano
WRTI PRODUCTION TEAM:
Melinda Whiting: Host
Alex Ariff: Senior Producer
Joseph Patti: Broadcast Engineer
Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts every Sunday at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1, streaming at WRTI.org, on the WRTI mobile app, and on your smart speaker. Listen again on Mondays at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2. Listen for up to two weeks after broadcast on WRTI Replay, accessible from the WRTI homepage (look for Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert On Demand).
