Tucson Symphony Orchestra concert highlights harp concerto

Tucson Symphony Orchestra concert highlights harp concerto

World-class harpist Yolanda Kondonassis flew into Tucson last winter to rent a harp.

When you play an instrument that stands 6 feet and weighs nearly 100 pounds, it’s not as if you can stow it in the belly of a passenger plane.

And no where in the cities where she was performing in New Mexico and Texas could she find a harp.

“So I flew into Tucson and rented a harp and a van and drove over to New Mexico and El Paso,” she recalled in a recent phone interview.

She won’t have that problem when she arrives in Tucson to perform Ginastera’s Harp Concerto with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra this weekend.

“I am really looking forward to coming to Tucson,” said Kondonassis, who is no stranger here. She has played with the TSO before and has appeared on the lineup for Arizona Friends of Chamber Music’s winter festival.

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The Ginastera is the seminal work for harpists including Kondonassis. It’s the piece that launches a harpist’s career into another realm.

“This was the piece that said to me, ‘You know what, you can do this career. This career is going to work for you because there is a piece like this.’” Kondonassis said.

She described it as a piece that is at times powerful and muscular, with profound layers that reveal Latin-accented rhythms. The piece dispelled for Kondonassis the harp’s mythical role as the instrument of “hearts and flowers.”

“It’s sort of all this striking rhythm. It has Latin accents and at the same time, moments of great reflection and repose,” she explained. “It exploits everything that I personally love about the harp: the strength, the rhythm, the definition but also the lyricism and the magic. You don’t get all that in too many pieces for any instrument.”

Kondonassis, one of the world’s leading harpists, became acquainted with the Ginastera concerto early in her 30-plus-year career. Two years ago, she curated a recording celebrating the centennial of the composer’s birth. The record includes performances of the Argentine composer’s Pampeana No. 1 for Violin and Piano; and his Guitar Sonata.

The record opens with Kondonassis performing the Harp Concerto.

“I had known this concerto for decades,” she said. “I think I’ve played this piece 215 times ... and it’s really a part of me. But what I think makes a piece of music stand the test of time is every time you come to it, you uncover a little something new. It is music that can be reinvented, and that’s what this piece is. I will never, as long as I am able, turn down an opportunity to play this. It’s kind of woven into my fiber at this point.”