Bolero and Don Juan

Strauss’s Don Juan was a shameless libertine who spent a lifetime seducing women, but who secretly longed for monogamy with “the perfect woman.” Unable to resist acting upon his desires, lost in “a storm of pleasure,” he willed his own death. This 17-minute masterpiece captures the passion, the torment, and the sorrowful end of this legendary character’s life in brilliant music.

Made famous for a new generation in the 1979 Bo Derek film 10, Ravel’s Bolero was originally conceived as a ballet score, whose story of a woman dancing on a table in a Spanish tavern drives to madness. The genius of this work is in its infinitely beautiful layers of sound, as the pulsing theme repeats and repeats, growing every more urgent—a masterwork that reveals new discoveries with every hearing.

Kevin Puts’s Contact imagines an encounter across galaxies, as he described it, “a call to intelligent life across the vast distances containing clues to our DNA, to our very nature as Earth people.” Written for the innovative ensemble Time for Three, the work won GRAMMY® Awards for the composer and artists in 2023. Discover a work of “harmony, conviviality ... lovely to the core” (San Francisco Classical Voice).