Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances
Date & Time
Event Description
Revisit Hollywood’s Golden Age with lush film scores from musical exiles Erich Korngold and Franz Waxman, whose music comes to life through conductor Anja Bihlmaier’s imagination “that lifts music off the page” (BBC). Shortly after fleeing a war-ravaged Europe for America, Rachmaninoff composed his expansive Symphonic Dances, a tour de force that would be his final work—what he called his “last spark.” Sprinkling in influences from his new home, he included a nostalgic solo for saxophone and a lurching waltz before its ominous finale. Hailed Cuba’s most gifted composer, Julián Orbón infused his homeland’s folk music into his works. Fleeing Nazi Germany, Arnold Schoenberg “assumed the sacred task of memorializing the unfathomable loss” in A Survivor from Warsaw (Time’s Echo).
