Join us on Sunday, Jan. 26 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, Jan. 27 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2 as The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert brings you an encore presentation of Debussy’s La mer, plus the world premieres of the Nomad Concerto for violin and orchestra by Mason Bates, featuring soloist Gil Shaham; and a Concerto for Orchestra by Valerie Coleman.
Coleman’s concerto, the latest of several she has written for the Philadelphians, opens the program. The work honors and reflects the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Migration northward of African Americans in the mid-20th century. Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin calls this work “optimistic, rhythmic, beautiful, and lyrical.” Throughout its three movements listeners can hear evocations of Appalachian folk music, big bands, and the juba dance tradition, among other musical influences.
This concert also features the world premiere of a new work by another living American composer, Mason Bates. His Nomad Concerto was written specifically for Gil Shaham, to showcase what the composer calls the violinist’s “legendary old-world sound.” Bates further comments that the concerto explores “the mysterious and soulful music of the wanderer.” Its four movements evoke images of nomads of various kinds: a wandering balloon man, an itinerant musician, a Jewish migrant in the desert, and a jazz musician in improvisatory flourishes.
This concert closes with La mer, a work that composer Claude Debussy described as “three symphonic sketches.” The first sketch takes us "From dawn to noon on the sea." The second depicts "The play of the waves," and in the final sketch, Debussy describes a "Dialogue between wind and waves.”
Debussy wrote La Mer over a period of 18 months between 1903 and 1905. During that time, he barely glimpsed the actual sea, but he drew inspiration from his memories of seaside holidays, from painted seascapes, and from seafaring literature. Once the work was finished, he did go on a seaside holiday to England, where he corrected the proofs of the score.
Though he had a sustained opportunity to observe the actual ocean at that
point, there’s no record of any substantive revisions as he finalized La Mer. His memories, paintings, and literary models had already served him well. As the critic Louis Laloy noted, “in each of these three episodes… Debussy has been able to create enduringly all the glimmerings and shifting shadows, caresses and murmurs, gentle sweetness and fiery anger, seductive charm and sudden gravity contained in the waves.”
PROGRAM:
Coleman: Concerto for Orchestra (world premiere)
Bates: Nomad Concerto for violin and orchestra (world premiere)
Debussy: La mer
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Gil Shaham, violin
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.