Season Finale: ENIGMATIC (Matinee)
Schedule
Sun Apr 21 2024 at 03:00 pm
Location
Henderson Fine Arts Center | Farmington, NM
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Get ready for an epic San Juan Symphony Season Finale!Music Director Thomas Heuser conducts: ENIGMATIC
featuring Inna Faliks, Piano Soloist
SATURDAY CONCERT 7:30pm in Durango
SUNDAY CONCERT 3:00pm in Farmington
PROGRAM:
Tragic Overture by Johannes Brahms
Lilith: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by Clarice Assad
(Western US Premiere)
Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar
Music has the incredible power to capture our imagination. Every concert of the San Juan Symphony has the potential to transport us to new places, paint colorful images, and evoke complex emotions. For the Season Finale, Enigmatic, coming up on April 20th and 21st, the centerpiece will be musical portraits, tragedies, and a mysterious ancient archetype.
Tickets can be purchased at the event in person, or online in advance. Tickets for the Saturday evening performance in Durango are available through the Community Concert Hall website: www.durangoconcerts.com. Tickets for the Sunday matinee performance in Farmington are available at the San Juan College Box Office: sjcboxoffice.universitytickets.com.
Orchestras are always searching for a composer's intentions. In the case of the wonderful Enigma Variations by English composer Edward Elgar, he teases us that the persistent melody, the one we hear in every one of the fourteen variations, is somehow rooted in the unknown. But we feel by the end of the piece that we know and love the melody, or at least, we have learned to love and appreciate it's place in the composer's life. He uses the somber theme as a lens through which to cast light on his entire community, from his wife to his friends and their pets. The music ends with a majestic self-portrait that brings audiences to their feet.
The myths surrounding Elgar's theme are familiar in some Symphony circles. But even more surprising will be the story of Lilith, as personified in a wild and captivating new Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by the Brazilian-American composer Clarice Assad. Commissioned in 2020, Assad wrote the solo part for pianist Inna Faliks, who will be returning to the San Juan Symphony for a repeat engagement. Music Director Thomas Heuser and Faliks are frequent collaborators; this will be only the 2nd performance of Lilith and the Western US Premiere.
"Inna wants to go where few pianists dare to venture," remarks Heuser. "She is one of the most brave and inspiring artists I have known, and her new memoir is astonishingly beautiful. Whereas we have performed many masterworks, this is our first collaboration on new music, and I am thrilled to find out what mysteries are enmeshed in this evocative score."
Clarice Assad's comments on Lilith are fascinating, and deserve a visit to her website. She writes, "To modern feminists, Lilith represents the fully liberated woman unbound by external chains of patriarchal suppression. In Jungian terms, she is anarchic primal Anima – the swirling chaos of repressed desires and unconscious fears, granted a form of seductive shadow. Luminously dark, her lingering mystique exists in the liminal space between base impulse and spiritual transcendence, never wholly safe but far too compellingly fascinating to resist."
As a dramatic preface to Assad's concerto, which consists of three interconnected movements, this wonderful Season Finale opens with the Tragic Overture by Johannes Brahms. Sweeping and majestic in its scope, the single movement symphonic poem has no specific program, and Brahms resisted a strict interpretation of his instrumental music. Therefore the mysteries and enigmas inherent in this music persist, and for more than 100 years, audiences have expressed a visceral and emotional reaction to the arresting power of Brahms' concise work.
Audiences are invited to hear a free lecture by the Music Director starting 1 hour before each concert, as well as the extended Musically Speaking lecture on Wednesday, April 17th from 6-7pm at the Powerhouse Science Center in Durango. The Wednesday evening event features snacks and a cash bar, and the lecture will be posted online for on-demand viewing.
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Where is it happening?
Henderson Fine Arts Center, Farmington, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
