Romantic Fates: Tchaikovsky’s Towering Fifth

Antonio Méndez returns after his terrific SDSO debut last season with a program bursting with overwhelming romantic feelings, surging love-songs and hair-tingling premonitions of melodramatic tragedy and fate. Mendelssohn’s surging and brilliantly orchestrated overture compresses into less than 10 minutes the essence of a play by the French poet Victor Hugo (celebrated author of Les Misérables): a poor poet falls in love with the Queen of Spain, with disastrous consequences for both of them. Max Bruch pours out one melody after another in one of the best-loved violin concertos of all time. And Tchaikovsky thrills us with the tumultuous operatic energy of his Fifth Symphony, complete with doom-laden trumpet-calls, dreamlike dance sequences, rushing strings, and in the slow movement a love song for the solo horn that is one of the sweetest and most heartfelt moments from anywhere in the marvelous composer’s output.

Antonio Méndez, conductor
Paul Huang, violin
San Diego Symphony Orchestra

MENDELSSOHN: Overture to Ruy Blas, Op. 95
BRUCH: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26
TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64