Festival Orchestra

Antonín Dvořák’s eighth symphony is often described as cheery, genial, and upbeat. It offers one delightful melody after another, whether evoking themes from Bohemian folk music the composer adored or scenes of local pastoral beauty. As one conductor instructed the orchestra before the fanfare that opens the fourth movement: “Gentlemen, in Bohemia the trumpets never call to battle—they always call to the dance!” Speaking of fanfare, this concert opens with Mason Bates’s Soundcheck in C Major, which is, in his words, “a fanfare animated by sonic effects” that might remind some of Wagner, and others of Pink Floyd.

Stéphane Denève is Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the recently appointed Artistic Director of the New World Symphony. He’s thrilled to join the Festival Orchestra for an evening of greatest hits from John Williams’s vast catalog of film music.

Bronfman, a “marvel of digital dexterity, warmly romantic sentiment, and jaw-dropping bravura” (Chicago Tribune), returns to Sun Valley to perform Schumann’s only piano concerto. After a wildly successful premiere by his wife, Clara, the piece immediately became known, and loved, for the exquisitely delicate way in which Schumann weaves together equal roles for the pianist and the orchestra. The concert opens with Finlandia, which Jean Sibelius wrote as a patriotic celebration of his homeland in 1900, followed by Threnody (In Memory of Jean Sibelius), which was written in 1965 by U.S. composer William Grant Still in honor of the great composer’s birth 100 years prior. The annual dance party on the lawn will follow this concert.