Philharmonia Orchestra & Santtu-Matias Rouvali: American Dreams

About this event

Seventy-five years, almost to the day, since the Philharmonia Orchestra's first concert, the orchestra’s Principal Conductor Designate, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, opens a season like no other in its history in a concert streamed live from London's Royal Festival Hall.

A trio of American composers, and one who became an American citizen, rub shoulders in Rouvali’s appealing programme. Aaron Copland’s much-loved Appalachian Spring tells the tender, hopeful story of a young couple preparing for their wedding. Rouvali joins the Philharmonia’s percussion section on claves (tuned woodblocks) for Steve Reich’s mesmerizing Music for Pieces of Wood. Florence Price conjures up the Deep South of her childhood in three characterful dances, a Rag, a Slow Drag, and a Cakewalk. Igor Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks is named after the grand Washington home of the couple who commissioned it. But with its lively counterpoint and contrast of timbres between strings, woodwind, and horns, it is an homage not to American music but to J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

Your ticket purchase will directly support the participating artists through IDAGIO’s Fair Artist Payout Model: IDAGIO pays 80% of the net revenue directly to the performers.

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Programme

• 1. Concert – approx. 90 min  

Repertoire

1. 1. Aaron Copland: Appalachian Spring, Suite (1945) (Version for Orchestra)

2. 2. Steve Reich: Music for Pieces of Wood (1973)

3. 3. Florence Price: Dances in the Canebrakes (1953)

4. 4. Igor Stravinsky: Concerto for Orchestra in E flat major “Dumbarton Oaks”

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Streamed live from the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London.