Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop is on a roll.
In her ongoing commitment to bringing contemporary composers and conductors to public attention, she introduces the works of one of the leading composers of our day to Baltimore audiences this weekend ? John Corigliano.
“I do a lot of music by Corigliano. He?s a phenomenal composer,” Alsop said. “He?s able to bring the ?old world? together with our contemporary world.”
Corigliano, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2001 for his “Symphony No. 2” and an Academy Award in 1998 for best film score for “The Red Violin,” will be on hand to discuss his work Wednesday in the Composers in Conversation series at the Theatre Project.
Featured in the program are his “Piano Concerto” with pianist William Wolfrom, and his hauntingly beautiful piece, “To Music,” a tribute to Franz Schubert?s “An Die Musik.”
” ?To Music? is a short, lyrical piece involving the orchestra and some offstage players,” Corigliano said. “The onstage orchestra plays a long, chorale like passage, answered by short fanfare elements. Later, the offstage players take up these fanfare elements, and the ensemble builds to a peak before resolving into a gentle setting of Schubert?s masterly song, “An Die Musik,” from which all the earlier fanfare elements were taken.”
Mei-Ann Chen, the 2007 Taki Concordia conducting fellow, will make her BSO debut, taking the podium for Corigliano?s piece in what Alsop calls “[making] that connection with offstage instruments playing music that is reminiscent of an ancient kind of music, [and] blended together with music onstage from today.”
Also on the evening?s repertoire is Beethoven?s “Eroica”, a masterful reflection of the spirit of hope and prosperity that had overtaken Europe at the start of the 19th century. Beethoven fans will note that while composing this symphony, he battled with his degenerative hearing loss while redefining the symphonic form.
