The City of Philadelphia has prohibited all gatherings of more than 1,000 people for 30 days in an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19. All scheduled Philadelphia Orchestra rehearsals, performances, and events through April 11, 2020, are therefore cancelled. The health and safety of all is our top priority.
This impacts the following performances at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and the Academy of Music:
- BeethovenNOW: Symphonies 5 & 6 (March 12, 14, and 15)
- BeethovenNOW: Symphonies 2 & 3 (March 19, 21, and 22)
- Sound All Around: Ensemble (March 21 and 23)
- BeethovenNOW: Symphonies 8, 4, & 7 (March 27–29)
- BeethovenNOW: Symphonies 1 & 9 (April 2–5)
Options if you have tickets to a cancelled event:
- Exchange your tickets to an upcoming performance. To offer increased flexibility, we are waiving all ticket exchange fees through May 2, 2020.
- Donate your tickets. You will receive a tax receipt for your generous contribution.
- Please contact Patron Services to discuss additional options.
Ticket exchanges and donations can be completed in My Account, or by contacting Patron Services at 215-893-1999 or [email protected].
Please contact Group Sales at 215-893-1968 with any group ticket questions.
GO TO MY ACCOUNT
Please be aware that Patron Services are responding to a high volume of emails and your inquiry may take longer than normal to answer. We appreciate your patience and understanding.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor
Angel Blue Soprano
Mihoko Fujimura Mezzo-soprano
Rolando Villazón Tenor
Quinn Kelsey Baritone
Westminster Symphonic Choir and Community Voices
Joe Miller Director
PROGRAM
Beethoven Symphony No. 1
Frank Pachamama Meets an Ode - WORLD PREMIERE - PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA COMMISSION
Beethoven Symphony No. 9 ("Choral")
Beethoven was just 25 when he wrote his First Symphony. Delightful and high-spirited, floating on strains of Mozart and Haydn, it's a fascinating glimpse of the greatness and genius to come—all on full, glorious display in the climactic Ninth. Written just a few short years before his death, Beethoven's profound ode to brotherhood, salvation, and pure joy reminds us why we are here as an orchestra, says Yannick, and why we constantly try to make our world better by playing music. Today we ask, is our world better? What in this world sparks joy? Composer-in-Residence Gabriela Lena Frank draws inspiration from Beethoven, his world, and her Peruvian culture to ask these profound questions and to address issues of climate change.
Frank on Pachamama Meets an Ode
In my choral-orchestral work Pachamama Meets an Ode, Beethoven is treated to a scene of an indigenous painter plying his trade in a Spanish church with Moorish (Mudéjar) arches constructed on the remains of a demolished Inca temple. The painter hides spirits from bygone native cultures (Chavín … Moche … Huarí) amidst European figurines, equipping them with protective natural talismans (huacas) and friendly fauna. He is readying his subjects for their journeys, as paintings, into lands violently transformed by colonization. Even old indigenous myths take on new meanings as a Peruvian pistaqo is no longer simply a highland boogie man, but also an urban capitalist murdering indios for their body fat to grease factory machines.
In our modern-day global climate crisis, lands are increasingly fallow, polluted rivers astonishingly burst into flames, and animals disappear into extinction. Gifts from the past—especially odes—must be looked at with new and searching eyes.
Pachamama asks, challenging us: What of joy?