What is an echo?
It’s a simple question, sort of, but one that Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra Music Director Linus Lerner answers with a melody.
Asked about the orchestra’s concert this weekend, “Echoes of Triumph,” Lerner started humming the melody from Dvorák’s monumental “Symphony No. 9 “From the New World.”
“It is one of his most successful symphonies,” he explained, adding that American astronaut Neil Armstrong took a recording of the symphony with him on the 1969 Apollo 11 moon mission.
The Dvorák anchors a program that defines triumph in every note.
There’s the personal triumph of a composer who envisioned the gardens of Spain’s Royal Palace of Aranjuez but had never actually seen them. Joaquin Rodrigo was blind from the age of 3, and yet in his flamenco-inspired “Concierto de Aranjuez” concerto for classical guitar and orchestra, “he imagined the birds, he imagined the feelings without seeing,” Lerner said.
“Its just impressive, this piece. It’s a triumph,” he added.
Everything on “Echoes of Triumph” represents victory in some small way, from the opening “Triumphal March” from Verdi’s opera “Aida” to the beauty of Czech-born Dvorák’s “New World Symphony,” one of the most popular symphonies of all time.
“Dvorák was living in the United States and he was feeling like he wanted to do something with the feeling of American music,” Lerner explained. “He created something beautiful ... inspired by the music of his host country.”
“Echoes of Triumph” is the second concert in the “Echoes” series. Lerner will lead the orchestra, with classical guitarist Barbora Kublikova from the Czech Republic. Performances are at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15, at DesertView Performing Arts Center, 39900 S. Clubhouse Drive in SaddleBrooke; and 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 7575 N. Paseo del Norte. Tickets are $35 for SaddleBrooke, $28 for Tucson through sasomusic.org.
TSO guest soloist doing double duty
Violinist/violist Yura Lee has the distinction of being a virtuoso on both instruments.
Which could explain why the Tucson Symphony Orchestra tapped the Los Angeles musician to perform William Walton’s Viola Concerto and the solo violin role in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ beautiful masterwork “The Lark Ascending.”
This weekend’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” concert, with guest conductor Alexander Prior, will mark the Los Angeles musician’s TSO debut. The orchestra will perform the concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 15, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16, at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave.
James Reel, longtime Tucson classical music critic and Arizona Public Media classical music director, will narrate Benjamin Britten’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” a work originally commissioned in 1945 for the British educational documentary film “Instruments of the Orchestra.”
The intention was to showcase the individual instruments and voices of the orchestra, with the narrator adding commentary.
The program opens with Strauss’s “Tod und Verklärung.” Tickets are $16.90-$109.30 through tucsonsymphony.org.
