Opening Night Concert
with Yannick and María Dueñas
Featured Artists
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Terry Gross
María Dueñas
Experience Tchaikovsky's impassioned Romeo and Juliet alongside the world premiere of Terence Blanchard’s evocative orchestral suite from Fire Shut Up in My Bones and María Dueñas’ captivating performance in Bruch’s First Violin Concerto, all weaving a tapestry of love, passion, and musical brilliance.
The concert begins with Terence Blanchard’s resetting of his headline-making operatic triumph Fire Shut Up in My Bones into an orchestral suite—a stunning introduction to music that “deftly blends elements of jazz, blues, hints of big band and gospel into a compositional voice dominated by lushly chromatic” writing (The New York Times).
Next is Bruch’s melodic, lyrically rapturous First Violin Concerto, a showcase for an astonishingly gifted 21-year-old violinist, whose “fearless attack and nimble-fingered technique” deliver “an assured, deeply felt performance, full of character and strong on musical storytelling” (The Guardian).
One of Tchaikovsky’s most beautiful works closes the evening. He wrote Romeo and Juliet when he was lost in love; small wonder, then, that Shakespeare’s tale of star-crossed lovers inspired new heights of genius for this passion-driven composer. His Fantasy Overture brilliantly condenses all the power and pathos of the play into an extraordinary flight of emotion—the yearning of young love, the scathing power of hatred, and the tragedy of life lost too soon.
Program
Blanchard
Orchestral Suite from Fire Shut Up in My Bones (world premiere—Philadelphia Orchestra co-commission)
Bruch
Violin Concerto No. 1
Tchaikovsky
Romeo and Juliet
Additional Performance Information
