The Philadelphia Orchestra
Performers
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director and Conductor
Angel Blue, Soprano
Program
MATTHEW AUCOIN Suite from Eurydice (NY Premiere)
VALERIE COLEMAN This Is Not a Small Voice (NY Premiere)
BARBER Knoxville: Summer of 1915
PRICE Symphony No. 1
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.
At a Glance
At age 31, the American composer Matthew Aucoin is one of the youngest composers ever to have an opera presented by the Metropolitan Opera. His Eurydice, a co-commission with Los Angeles Opera, was broadcast internationally late last year, and on this concert we hear the New York premiere of an orchestral suite he has crafted from it. Sarah Ruhl’s libretto tells the mythic tale of Orpheus from the standpoint of his beloved Eurydice, who is usually relegated to an ancillary role to the lyre-strumming hero.
Philadelphia claims Samuel Barber as one of its own. Born in the suburbs and trained at the Curtis Institute of Music, he went on to become one of the great composers of the 20th century, an imaginative traditionalist who kept elements of musical Romanticism alive. His one-movement work for soprano and orchestra, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, is based on an evocative prose poem by James Agee about a boy growing up in the south.
The concert continues with another Philadelphia Orchestra commission and New York premiere with Valerie Coleman’s inspiring work that sets words by contemporary Philadelphia poet Sonia Sanchez. “This Is Not a Small Voice” celebrates the strength of Black individuals and communities, whose collective “voice” sweeps like a “river,” spreading love, healing, and creative “Genius” through every corner of our cities.
Florence Price’s magnificent Symphony No. 1 was the first such work written by a Black woman to be performed by a leading American orchestra when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered it in 1933. Price, who had trained at the New England Conservatory of Music, wrote three more symphonies (one seems to be lost) and hundreds of other pieces. Her works were largely forgotten after her death in 1953 until the discovery in 2009 of a rich trove of unpublished compositions led to an enthusiastic embrace of her music. The Philadelphians have been at the forefront of performing her symphonies, which they recently recorded.