Under the baton of its principal conductor, Rafael Payare, the San Diego Symphony Orchestra weaves a tapestry of wild soundscapes in this concert, featuring mythical blue deer, a bird with magical powers, and figures with sinister intentions. Violin virtuoso Leonidas Kavakos enriches the evening with Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto, which gives the soloist no respite and traces the composer’s emotional world between fear and rebellion under the Stalin regime.
The evening opens and closes with fantastical creatures: Stravinsky’s famous ballet suite sets to music, with iridescent opulence, the fairy tale of Prince Ivan, who frees the magical Firebird and, with it, defeats the sorcerer Kashchei. Gabriela Ortiz explores the Blue Deer, a legendary figure from her native Mexico: the Huichol people come into contact with him through a hallucinogenic cactus and revere him as a spiritual healer and guide to an invisible world.
The programme also features a scandalous piece by Béla Bartók: the suite from the ballet »The Miraculous Mandarin«. None other than Konrad Adenauer, then mayor of Cologne, ensured that the piece was banned from performance for the time being following its premiere. For the 1920s, the piece’s themes of prostitution, pimping and murder were too explicit – yet it fits all the better with the theme of the 2027 International Music Festival: »Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll«. Added to this is Bartók’s expressive music, which irritated audiences at the time but has since taken a firm place in the concert repertoire.
PERFORMERS
San Diego Symphony orchestra
Leonidas Kavakos violin
Rafael Payare conductor
PROGRAM
Gabriela Ortiz
Kauyumari
Dmitri Schostakowitsch
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77
- Interval -
Béla Bartók
Suite from »The Miraculous Mandarin«, Sz 73
Igor Strawinsky
L’oiseau de feu (The Firebird)
