Featured Artists
Marin Alsop
Yunchan Lim
What better way to celebrate the Orchestra’s 125th anniversary than with the commissioning and world premiere performances of a new work by preeminent American composer John Adams? Adams has seized the public imagination with music that transforms concert halls and opera stages. Featured in this program is a “one-in-a-million talent” (Dallas Morning News): The youngest ever to win the coveted Van Cliburn Competition Gold Medal, pianist Yunchan Lim transfixes fans with his virtuosic gifts.
Yunchan Lim’s rise to fame has excited worldwide attention. His YouTube videos draw millions of views, prompting the New York Times to choose one of them for its Top 10 Classical Performances of 2022. Here he performs Bartók’s lyrical Third Piano Concerto. Written in the composer’s final months, it’s a luminous celebration of life.
The program begins with the world premiere of a new John Adams work, commissioned by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Regarded by many as America’s greatest living composer, Adams has been a defining force in contemporary music for decades, writing across genres including opera, orchestral, chamber, choral music, and more, taking on subjects from nuclear warfare (Dr. Atomic) to international politics (Nixon in China) and beyond.
Written as a ballet score, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet not only captures the depth of emotion in Shakespeare’s masterwork, from the tenderness and yearning of young love to the tragedy of unimaginable loss, but it also stands alone as a marvelous orchestral work. Principal Guest Conductor Marin Alsop has won rave reviews for her interpretations of this music, a showcase for her “exquisitely calibrated control of dynamics. ... By the end of the concert, the audience seemed reluctant to let Alsop go, eventually parting in sweet sorrow” (Bachtrack).
Program
Adams
The Rock You Stand On (world premiere—Philadelphia Orchestra commission)
Bartók
Piano Concerto No. 3
Prokofiev
Selections from Romeo and Juliet