Tianyi Lu, conductor
Paul Lewis, piano
San Diego Symphony Orchestra
GARETH FARR: "The Invocation of the Sea" from From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37
TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36
The approximate running time for this concert, including intermission, is one hour and fifty minutes.
Winner of the Sir Georg Solti International Conductors' Competition, conductor Tianyi Lu opens her concert with the self-standing first movement of Gareth Farr’s From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs. Farr is one of New Zealand’s leading composers and a distinguished percussionist whose music pulsates with exultant rhythms and colors reflecting his love of the landscapes and surrounding oceans of his native islands, as well as his fascination with his country’s Māori musical and mythic traditions which go back hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans.
Beethoven had been laboring under the intimidating shadows of Mozart and Haydn as a composer, but with his Piano Concerto No. 3, he began truly to strike out on his own. (The very next thing he wrote after the premiere was his revolutionary Eroica Symphony.) The distinguished soloist will be the English pianist Paul Lewis. And the concert ends with one of the best loved of all Tchaikovsky’s works, his intensely dramatic Fourth Symphony, written at one of the most productive periods in the composer’s life, the time of his ballet Swan Lake and his opera Eugene Onegin. Operatic and balletic this symphony certainly is, with its fateful horn calls and its yearning melodies, and its infectious dance rhythms and sheer physical élan.
Please note: the repertoire for this concert has changed from previously published materials.