Gandelsman Returns!
Adam Flatt, conductor
Johnny Gandelsman, violin*
November 8th, 2025 - 7:30pm at the Newport Performing Arts Center - Pre-concert chat with Maestro Adam Flatt at 6:45pm
November 9th, 2025 - 2:00pm at the Newport Performing Arts Center.
Jennifer Higdon, Blue Cathedral
Felix Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64*
Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 "Pathétique"
We begin this evening's concert with renowned American composer, Jennifer Higdon. Written in 1999, Blue Cathedral was commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the Curtis Institute. Titles of musical compositions are often—most often it can seem—misleading, but this one is singularly apt. Cast in a single short movement of lush, soothing cascades of orchestra sound, the over-used descriptor, “shimmering,” is more than apropos in this case. Imaginative scoring for strings and delicate percussion—including exotic bells and water glasses—are the foundation for an evocation of the atmosphere of the title. Short motives from various wind instruments provide aphoristic commentaries throughout, but generally without what would call “tunes.” The whole weft of sound seems to gently and constantly float upward without having to start all over at the “bottom.” It’s a remarkable and sensual musical experience, and justly deserves its popularity as perhaps the composer’s most performed composition.
Next up, we celebrate the welcome return of local favorite and MacArthur Genius Fellow, Johnny Gandelsman. Mendelssohn wrote several concertos for both piano and for violin. The last concerto, for violin, is one of the most important solo works of the nineteenth century. Finished in the fall of 1844, after many years of work, the concerto is the product of a man at the height of his artistic powers. At the time Mendelssohn was literally the toast of Europe, composing fervidly, visiting everywhere as guest conductor and composer, serving as music administrator of a new conservatory in Leipzig, and all the while trying to cope with the bedeviling trials of an official appointment at the Prussian court at Berlin and Potsdam. He was literally working himself to death, and his life, indeed only lasted a few more years. The concerto was premièred in 1845 in Leipzig by Mendelssohn’s friend, the great violinist, Ferdinand David, himself a noted composer (yay trombones!) but the performance of it by the very young virtuoso of violin, Joseph Joachim, one month before Mendelssohn’s death in 1847 must have been a particularly poignant one. At the time he was driven to incapacitation by the death of his beloved sister; that and his onerous professional schedule led to a series of strokes that killed him. Johnny Gandelsman's performance is certain to move you to new emotional heights.
The evening concludes with Tchaikovsky's massive Symphony No. 6. Maestro Adam Flatt and the Newport Symphony will take you on a powerful journey into the depths of the composer's very soul. This symphony is Tchaikovsky’s last work—he died of cholera only nine days after its première—and it is universally hailed as one of his finest. It exhibits all of the characteristic passion and melodic beauty for which the composer justly is known, and is suffused with a dark and tragic essence. Tchaikovsky struggled all of his life with his identity, fears of social rejection, and frustrated relationships with others. By the end of his life these issues had surely come to a head, and the composer freely spoke with his brother of the reflection of his suffering in this final, gripping composition. There is even a current musicological fight over whether or not he poisoned himself to end his life (under threat of social disgrace), or deliberately drank the un-boiled glass of water during an epidemic. In any case, the circumstances of his life’s final struggles are manifest in this beautiful and tragic work. In the event, he had at first actually considered “Tragic” as a subtitle for the symphony, but his brother suggested the Russian for “pathos,” and the French equivalent, “pathétique,” is the evocative descriptor that we all know. But, be aware of inexact translations--there is nothing pathetic here.
