Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony

Felix Mendelssohn was 21 when he toured Italy, an impressionable, impassioned young composer alive to musical inspiration. He was already developing an international reputation, and this trip stirred his imagination. He described his “Italian” Symphony, rich in imagery and melody, as “blue sky in A major.”

John Williams’s jaunty Tuba Concerto is a delightful opportunity to experience the many gifts of Principal Tuba Carol Jantsch, whose sound is “as clear and sure as it is luxurious” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). 

The program opens with a long-lost gem. Julius Eastman was a shooting star of a composer, an extraordinary talent ahead of his time. Born in 1940, Black and gay, he was as defiant as he was gifted. Living and creating on the edge, Eastman fell into poverty and homelessness, dying alone and unheralded in 1990. In recent years, new audiences have embraced his works, including his powerful Second Symphony. Tender and shattering, it was created as a farewell to a former lover, with whom it remained until rediscovered and premiered in 2018.