Festival Orchestra

Home to some of the most popular and recognizable tunes in classical music, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 was an instant success and remains one of the most performed orchestra pieces today. Reviewing Joyce Yang’s performance, one critic noted that she “brought forth from the audience as visceral and sustained a standing ovation as I’ve heard in response to a concerto.” Don’t miss this concert, which opens with the orchestra’s performance of Bedrich Smetana’s symphonic poem, The Moldau, which depicts the journey of that river in his Bohemian homeland.

Plagued by insecurity, Tchaikovsky wrote about this symphony: “I am exceedingly anxious to prove to myself, as to others, that I am not played out as a composer.” Judge for yourself, but there’s a reason this monumental piece makes a great season finale: some of the loveliest tunes ever written, leading to a smashing and triumphant finale. The main challenge most audiences have is holding back their applause until the very end!

The “awakening of cheerful feelings upon arriving in the country.” That might describe the drive into the Wood River Valley, but it’s also the label Beethoven applied to the first movement of his sixth symphony! In this explicitly programmatic work, Beethoven references sounds heard in nature, including birdcalls, a burbling brook, a terrifying summer thunderstorm, and a shepherd’s song. Throughout, one can easily imagine the composer strolling through his beloved Austrian countryside, enjoying a respite from bustling Vienna. The program opens with Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, a piece which Beethoven decided was too grand to be anything else but self-sufficient.

Hailed by The Times as “without question the most astounding pianist of our age,” Daniil Trifonov won a Grammy Award in 2018, was Musical America’s 2019 Artist of the Year, and has seven albums in Billboard’s Top classical Album charts. After performing Pictures at an Exhibition in the Festival’s virtual season in 2020, Trifonov will appear in person to play Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a work conceived amidst the pressure the composer felt in living up to the expectations of his mentor, Robert Schumann. A vision from a dream inspired Brahms to transform a modest work for two solo pianos into a piano concerto, pairing the soloist and orchestra as equal partners. The result is a quintessential Brahms masterpiece, full of complexity and ambition, and following the model of great concertos by Beethoven and Mozart.