This week WETA Classical marks the start of the Fall season at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Here are 3 notable opening shows:
Wednesday morning, September 27th at 11 o’clock, WETA Classical brings you a special broadcast of the highlights from the National Symphony Orchestra’s Season Opening Gala which featured 4 members of the NSO in starring roles, and the ever-popular Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky. Read all about the program here.
The 2023-24 NSO season’s first subscription concerts (September 28-30) celebrate Rachmaninoff at 150.
And opera lovers will enjoy the 13th annual Opera in the Outfield at Nationals Park on Saturday, September 30th. It’s free and it’s fun for the whole family. Festivities begin at 5:00...Bugs Bunny appears as Brunhilde on the big Nats HD screen, there are games, and booths and prizes aplenty. Be sure to stop by the WETA Classical booth and say hello. The main attraction, a simulcast of WNO’s production of Puccini’s La Bohème, starts at 7, and you can watch from the grass field or the bleachers, depending on the weather and your preference. It’s a great introduction to opera for the family because the music is gorgeous, and the story is simple and straightforward and goes straight to the heart. For more information, check out Evan Keely’s blog, Opera Out and About.
Finally, let me tell you a little bit about Rachmaninoff at 150, the first NSO subscription concerts of the season.
NSO music director Gianandrea Noseda developed a special affinity for Rachmaninoff over the course of his decade as the first principal guest conductor of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre. This tribute to Rachmaninoff spans music from three periods in the composer’s life: his youth, his final years in Russia before the 2017 revolution, and his long exile in the West.
First on the program is the youthful tone-poem The Rock, which Rachmaninoff composed at age 20, inspired by Chekhov’s short story, “On the Road”. The plot concerns two travelers, a lonely middle-aged man, and a young woman, stranded at an inn during a Christmas eve blizzard. The girl eventually departs, leaving the man lonelier than ever. “The snowflakes greedily settled on his hair, his beard, his shoulders,” writes Chekhov, “...and he himself covered with snow, began to look like a white rock, but still his eyes kept seeking for something in the clouds of snow.”
Fast forward 30 years to 1927, when the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered the 4th Piano Concerto to disappointing reviews. The concerto felt too “modern” for current musical tastes. Rachmaninoff even dared to show his admiration for Gershwin’s music with some jazzy riffs of his own. Also, the concerto was quite long--Rachmaninoff joked that it would have to be played over several evenings, like Wagner’s Ring Cycle. He revised and shortened it twice, issuing the definitive version in 1941. One biographer (Robert Matthew-Walker) describes the finale as “hectic, action-packed music...orchestrated with a complete and profound mastery.”
The final work on the program is the 1913 choral symphony, The Bells which Rachmaninoff claimed was one of his two favorite compositions (the other being the Vespers). He explained in his memoirs that “the sound of church bells dominated all the cities of Russia I used to know. They accompanied every Russian from childhood to the grave and no composer could escape their influence.”
With the tintinnabulation of Russian bells thus ringing in his ears, Rachmaninoff was uniquely drawn to Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, The Bells. The result was a 4-movement symphony for chorus, soloists and orchestra, each movement depicting a stage of life--childhood, youth, adulthood, and death. The movements are titled, The Silver Sleigh Bells, The Mellow Wedding Bells, The Loud Alarm Bells, and The Mournful Iron Bells. The Bells was a resounding success, earning Rachmaninoff one the greatest ovation of his life.
Program:
Gianandrea Noseda Conducts Rachmaninoff at 150 (September 28-30)
Denis Kozhukhin, piano
Elena Stikhina, soprano
Pavel Petrov, tenor
Alexey Markov, bass-baritone
Choral Arts Society of Washington
National Symphony Orchestra
The Rock; Fantasy, Op.7
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No.4 in G minor, Op.40
The Bells, Op.35
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