Raise your glass with us for the National Symphony Orchestra’s 93rd season and WETA Classical’s 16th season of NSO Showcase programs. To celebrate, we’re kicking off the festivities with a special Season Opening Gala concert, broadcast on Wednesday morning, September 27th at 11 on air and online.
We’ll bring you the highlights of the NSO’s glamorous Gala (held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, September 23rd). Music director Gianandrea Noseda will conduct an exhilarating program of orchestral showpieces. Four of the National Symphony’s Associate and Assistant Principal Musicians: violinists Ying Fu and Dayna Hepler, violist Abigail Evans Kreuzer and cellist Glenn Garlick will be featured in Sir Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro. This piece, for string quartet and string orchestra, was written to showcase members of the new London Symphony Orchestra in 1905 and includes a beautiful melody that Elgar heard while vacationing in Wales.
The percussion section gets a workout in the Gala’s opening work, Rossini’s Overture to La Gazza Ladra that begins with a snare drum roll. He claimed to have written the overture under duress the day of the premiere, imprisoned in a room under the roof at La Scala, guarded by 4 stagehands who had orders to throw him out the window if he didn’t produce the music in time!
Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers reflects Beethoven’s struggles with the concept of destiny and is inspired by a quote from Beethoven’s journal and the second movement of his 7th Symphony.
The whole orchestra gets to rock its virtuosity in Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. From the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks to the Witch Baba Yaga’s Hut on Fowl Legs to the Paris Catacombs to the Great Gate of Kyiv, Mussorgsky and Ravel make us “see” these vivid works of art through music.
The Season Opening Gala concert is the kick-off to our 16th NSO Showcase season which will highlight some of the orchestra’s best performances and popular soloists. Pour yourself a little bubbly (or a good cup of coffee) and join us for this most elegant broadcast Wednesday morning, September 27th at 11 on air and online.
If you’d like to attend the Gala in person, on Saturday, September 23rd at the Kennedy Center, details are here. Then relive the excitement with us on WETA Classical during the special broadcast.
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