San Diego Symphony at McCallum Theatre (Palm Desert)

Rafael Payare, conductor
Alexander Malofeev, piano
San Diego Symphony Orchestra

BILLY CHILDS: Concerto for Orchestra (World Premiere, Commissioned by San Diego Symphony)
PROKOFIEV: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55, Eroica

Rising star Alexander Malofeev (“Truly remarkable” - Boston Classical Review) takes the McCallum Theatre stage with the San Diego Symphony in Prokofiev’s muscular and demanding Piano Concerto No. 3, a work originally written for the composer himself to play as part of his many tours of the USA in the 1920s and 1930s. The program begins with the World Premiere weekend of Los Angeles-born, GRAMMY® Award-winning composer Billy Childs’ Concerto for Orchestra, and ends with Music Director Rafael Payare leading the Symphony in Beethoven’s celebrated Eroica symphony, one of the most influential symphonies in the Western musical canon. Shocking in Beethoven’s own time for the unfamiliar vastness of its dimensions and its huge orchestral sound, this symphony ends with a mighty set of variations based on music from Beethoven’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, which celebrate the evolution of human beings from mere unfeeling creatures made of clay to living, breathing human beings, capable of liberty, equality, fraternity and love.