MTT’s Street Songs and Winter Daydreams

Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
Parker van Ostrand, piano
San Diego Symphony Orchestra

MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS: Street Song for Symphonic Brass
RACHMANINOFF: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op. 13, Winter Daydreams

Beloved American conductor and composer Michael Tilson Thomas makes his SDSO debut in this special program that opens with his own Street Song for Symphonic Brass, a work reflecting Tilson Thomas’s love for all kinds of popular and street music of the past and especially music connected with his grandparents, the Yiddish theatre stars Boris and Bessie Tomashefsky. Rising star pianist Parker van Ostrand will join Tilson Thomas and the Symphony for Rachmaninoff’s demanding Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, based on Paganini’s most famous and familiar ear-worm, his 24th Caprice for solo violin. The program ends with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1, the Russian composer’s first large-scale orchestral work. Conceived and written when the composer was still in his mid-twenties, this symphony makes delightful use of motifs and phrases derived from Russian village-songs; in the last movement, one whole folk-melody, originally a wedding song for dancing, anticipating the coming of Spring and the resurgence of new young life:

In a dark wood, in the forest,
I’ll go ploughing, my Paulina!
I’ll sow flax-seeds, I’ll sow green ones!

For Jacobs Masterworks concerts, only children ages five years and older will be allowed into the concert hall. These children must have a ticket and be able to sit in an un-accompanied seat.

Ace Parking has provided a DEDICATED JACOBS MUSIC CENTER PARKING PRE-PURCHASE PAGE for upcoming events at JMC.