“Times Square” from On the Town
Saturday, April 21, 2018
San Diego Symphony
Symphony Hall
San Diego, California, United States
Jahja Ling, conductor
Two towering masterpieces of Russian classical music dominate this concert, led by Jahja Ling, who makes his debut as the San Diego Symphony’s first Conductor Laureate. After a brief, jazzy opening excerpt from Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town, Ling leads a performance of that “Everest” of piano concertos, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Third, with rising young Uzbek sensation Behzod Abduraimov as soloist. The concert concludes with Dmitri Shostakovich’s enigmatic, intensely dramatic Symphony No. 5.