Breaking Free of Chains
Please note there has been a change. Beethoven's Leonore Overture is no longer on the program.
Concert 3: Breaking Free of Chains
Thursday, February 23 @ 7:30pm
Discovery Series
Sanders Theatre
Saturday, February 25 @ 8pm
Pre-concert talk at 6:45pm
Jordan Hall
Sunday, February 26 @ 3pm
Pre-concert talk at 1:45pm
Sanders Theatre
Ticket Prices:
Thurs: $15/$35/$50/$70
Sat/Sun: $25/$45/$70/$90
Witold Lutosławski was one of the most important and powerful composers of the second half of the twentieth century. Some would say the most significant of them all. The performances of Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra several years ago were a high water mark in the history of the orchestra, greeted on their conclusion by enthusiastic pandemonium in the audience. The Philharmonic returns to Lutosławski this year with his astonishing Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. Like a play without words it dramatizes the dilemma of the individual trapped in a repressive social system— in this case Soviet-dominated Poland— struggling to find his own voice and make it heard. The great English cellist Alexander Baillie has performed this work frequently and with unnerving passion; he is regarded as one of the work’s leading exponents since the death of Rostropovich, for whom it was written. Performances of this work are rare, riveting and unforgettable experiences.
Ein Heldenleben marks the climax of that string of magnificent tone poems that established Richard Strauss’s early fame and that, over the course of the ensuing century, have proved enduring and inexhaustible. Strauss himself is the hero of this Hero’s Life, and his vast orchestra with its limitless resources of color and nuance portrays the world in which he battles for the acceptance of his music, woos his future bride, and earns a place of eternal renown with his life’s achievements.
