Featured Artists
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Beatrice Rana
Philadelphia Orchestra Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin returns to Saratoga to lead two unique programs that can only be heard at SPAC.
The program opens with the suite from Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird. One of the most beloved ballets of all time, The Firebird was originally written by a then relatively unknown Stravinsky for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in the early 1900s. The imaginative score is equal parts thrilling and ethereal, bringing to life an old Russian tale and launching the composer’s now storied career.
Italian pianist Beatrice Rana returns to SPAC for the first time in a decade, performing Rachmaninoff’s inventive Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Since her first visit to SPAC, she has become one of the most sought-after pianists of her generation, earing praise for her “underlying calm command” (The New York Times) and refined approach.
Through SPAC’s and The Philadelphia Orchestra’s continued efforts to explore works by underrepresented composers, the program closes with the rarely performed Second Symphony by William Grant Still. A prolific composer who produced dozens of major orchestral works over his 50-year career, he had a storied relationship with The Philadelphia Orchestra and longtime maestro Leopold Stokowski who proclaimed Still as “one of our greatest American composers.”
Program
Stravinsky
Suite from The Firebird
Rachmaninoff
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, for piano and orchestra
Still
Symphony No. 2 (“Song of a New Race”)
