Mendelssohn's Reformation

Item details

Date

Friday, Oct 18, 2024 7:30PM

Name

Mendelssohn's Reformation - Onward to Triumph

Description

David Danzmayr, conductor
Conrad Tao, piano

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Ballade
Camille Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2
James MacMillan One
Felix Mendelssohn Symphony No. 5, “Reformation”

📍 This concert takes place at Touhill Performing Arts Center
🕒 1 hour, 30 min (including intermission)

David Danzmayr returns to the SLSO with pleas for unity and progress from Felix Mendelssohn and James MacMillan. Mendelssohn’s radiant "Reformation" symphony culminates in a blazing hymn. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was just 23 when he wrote his lush Ballade, a work pointing to great things. And soloist Conrad Tao shares Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2, a work he calls “both charming and dramatic.”

A few things to know:

• Conrad Tao says of Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2, “The final movement is a barnstormer—it begins full of humor, but then gets a little bit more rude. I try to embrace the over-the-top manner...”
• British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was especially known for his three cantatas on the epic 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha by American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His music was played across the world until his death in 1912, at just 37, but was all-but-forgotten for almost a century.
• Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” symphony is “such a gorgeous piece,” says guest conductor David Danzmayr. Taking the model of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, he capped his symphony with an almighty celebration of reform and progress over the stuffiness of the past.