Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor
Randall Goosby Violin
Ravel La Valse
Price Violin Concerto No. 1
Price Violin Concerto No. 2
Strauss Suite from Der Rosenkavalier
Program Notes
"There’s a golden glow around this piece, a sense of goodness in the world, for which the violinist and his deft virtuosity and pure sound were a perfect match." (The Philadelphia Inquirer, on Florence Price's Violin Concerto No. 1)
When Florence Price composed her violin concertos, she had to know that the chance they would be heard with an orchestra was virtually nil. And yet she wrote them.
Price’s life and career as a composer was indelibly marked by racial segregation in the United States. She was the first Black woman to have her work performed by a major American orchestra but was largely overlooked by the classical world. Following her death, Price’s work was nearly lost to obscurity.
Her violin concertos were unknown to the modern world until they were found by chance in an abandoned house in St. Anne, Illinois, in 2009 as part of a trove of thousands of pages of her music manuscripts. This October, Philadelphia audiences have a chance to hear them.
Yannick conducts the Orchestra with featured violinist Randall Goosby. A rising star, Goosby is acclaimed for the sensitivity and intensity of his musicianship alongside his determination to make music more inclusive and accessible, as well as bringing the music of underrepresented composers to light.
The program opens with Ravel’s La Valse, described by the composer as a Viennese waltz “mingled with, in my mind, the impression of a fantastic, fatal whirling.” An orchestral suite from Strauss’s spectacular comedic opera Der Rosenkavalier, full of lavish melodies and lovely waltzes, closes the program.