Simone Lamsma & Mozart - Lutosławski

The American jazz pianist and composer Anthony Davis has written many engaging operas, including one about the African American civil rights activist Malcolm X and about the Central Park jogger case, a court case in which black and Latino youths were convicted of a rape they did not commit. Principal conductor Hugh Wolff will perform a composition written by Anthony Davis in 2013, which is based on music by Duke Ellington: Notes from the Underground.

Mozart wrote a total of five violin concertos. Not at different times in his life, but all in one year, when he was 19 years old and served as concertmaster at the court of the Salzburg archbishops. Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma will be performing Mozart's Fourth Violin Concerto, in a joyous, virtuoso score.

George Walker studied at the Curtis Institute and also took classes with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1950s. He was the first African American to obtain a degree in piano and composition, to play a recital in New York’s Town Hall, and to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1996. His orchestral piece ‘Icarus in Orbit’ tells the story of Icarus, whose father Daedalus made wings out of beeswax to escape the island of Crete. George Walker conveys the fall of Icarus – who flew too close to the sun, causing his wings to melt – through the downward-spiralling notes of the flute.

After being accused of ‘formalism’ by the Russian authorities, the Polish composer Lutosławski began to base his compositions on folk music. His Concerto for orchestra (1954) in three movements draws inspiration from the Polish region of Kurpie, and the work earned Lutosławski international recognition. Some years later, he heard John Cage’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and began to concentrate on writing aleatoric music.
 

Hugh Wolff, conductor
Simone Lamsma, violin