Schumann's Second Symphony

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Image courtesy of L'auditori

Alena Baeva violinphoto: Marco Borggreve

Despite being conceived to accompany a play by Irwin Shaw—Quiet City, in which the protagonist tries to exorcise his anguish and loneliness by playing the trumpet—Aaron Copland’s composition of the same name has become a piece in its own right, highly communicative, and even charming. Its melancholic lyricism contrasts sharply with the more striking repetition of patterns and dizzying rhythms found in many of the works by fellow American composer Philip Glass. Such is the case of his Violin Concerto No. 1, which will feature Alena Baeva as soloist. Characterized by its dreamlike ambience and circularity, it invites the audience to enter a fantasy realm.

The orchestral ensemble, headed by Stephanie Childress, will take the lead in tackling Robert Schumann’s Symphony No 2. Passionate and contradictory, after a solemn introduction it seems to progress in a series of outbursts, becoming embedded in the auditory memory thanks to its glacial coldness—that of the second movement—which does in fact burn, as if narrating the unavoidable silent collision of ice masses from a distance; continents contained in the divided soul of the romantic author.

Program

• Aaron Copland: Quiet City (1939) 10′
• Philip Glass: Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (1987) 25’
• Robert Schumann: Symphony No.2, Op.61 (1845-1846) 37′

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