Serenade
8:00 pm
Friday, December 8, 2017
Philadelphia Orchestra
Carnegie Hall
New York, New York, United States
Yannick Nezet-Seguin, conductor; Hilary Hahn, violin
It’s a night of love, scandal, and drama. Bernstein’s Serenade, after Plato’s Symposium, explores the nature of love; its essence is captured in lyrical music laced with virtuosic solo violin passages that simultaneously eschew and hint at the West Side Story style. Sexual scandal drives the plot of Thomas Adès’s opera Powder Her Face with music—sultry tangos and uneasy waltzes—that evoke the glittery world of its protagonist, the Duchess of Argyll. Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1 lives in a gentler world of rich melody, technicolor orchestration, and drama.
