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
PROGRAM
Beethoven Symphony No. 8
Beethoven Symphony No. 4
INTERMISSION
Simon Fate Now Conquers WORLD PREMIERE - PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA COMMISSION
Beethoven Symphony No. 7
Buoyant and humorous, the Eighth Symphony belies none of the composer's worsening health issues or what had to be the devastating end of a love affair, detailed in a famous letter written around the same time to his “Immortal Beloved.” Perhaps the least known, the Fourth was widely admired: Schumann compared it to “a slender Greek maiden” between the two “Norse giants” of the Third and Fifth; Berlioz insisted it was the work of an angel. And Tchaikovsky described the triumphant Seventh as “full of unrestrained joy, full of bliss and pleasure of life.” The exhilarating and familiar second movement is said to have been so inspiring at the premiere, an encore was demanded instantly. Placing Beethoven’s motifs in a contemporary musical landscape, composer Carlos Simon draws on the uncertainty that Beethoven felt and turns it into inspiration with Fate Now Conquers.
Simon on Fate Now Conquers
Using the beautifully fluid harmonic structure of the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, I have composed musical gestures that are representative of the unpredictable ways of fate: jolting stabs along with frenzied arpeggios in the strings that morph into an ambiguous cloud of free-flowing running passages depicting the uncertainty of life that hovers over us.