2009-2010 Season, Concert 4
April 22, 24 and 25
Revueltas: Sensemayá
Ginastera: Harp Concerto
Gwyneth Wentink, harp
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring
For our final concert of the season, we offer you a program that is a virtual riot of color, verve, and virtuosity. The concert ends with Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, that protean masterpiece that caused a literal riot when it was first performed in 1913, and then careened through the entire twentieth century, directly influencing more music than did any other single composition written in those hundred years.
Sensemayá, by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, is situated quite directly in its wake. Thanks to the advocacy of several prominent European conductors, this little-known masterpiece has reached a broader audience in recent years, and never fails to create a sensation. It’s a compressed, rhythmically intoxicating, seven-minute evocation of Latin American musical styles—specifically Cuban—fused with the spirit of The Rite. Listeners who know their Rite well will even hear a couple of direct quotes, but with a Latin beat!
The repertory of harp concertos is larger than most people realize, but there is one twentieth century concerto that stands out, the spectacular Harp Concerto by Alberto Ginastera, another piece in which the spirit of Stravinsky is palpable. We are honored to be able to present the extraordinary young Dutch harp virtuoso Gwyneth Wentink, who has come to be regarded world-wide as the finest harpist of her generation. She brings a wealth of color and virtuosity to the harp, as well as uncommon depth of feeling. These are exactly the qualities that the Ginastera concerto demands, with its fabulous intertwining of harp and orchestra in sonorities that had never been imagined before, its tender, subtly introspective middle movement, and its stampeding finale, full of the pounding Argentinean dance rhythms for which Ginastera is so famous.
And then comes The Rite itself, its power to astonish and overwhelm undiminished after a century, and still sounding as if it were written yesterday. This is quite simply the hottest program that the BPO has ever presented! Join us, and let
yourself be blown away!
To download the program notes, click here.
To listen to an audio clip of this concert,
click here.
Programming is subject to change. |
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Thursday, April 22, 2010
Sanders Theatre
Discovery Series, 7:30pm
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Jordan Hall
Pre-concert talk, 6:45pm
Concert, 8:00pm
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Sanders Theatre
Pre-concert talk, 1:45pm
Concert, 3:00pm
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Gwyneth Wentink, harp |
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Current Season 
2009-2010 Season