Music is reborn again and again in an orchestral concert of breathtaking originality: from Ravel’s jazz infusions of the 1920s to Wigglesworth’s time-tripping Concerto, you are invited to a world of limitless possibility.
Elizabeth Ogonek’s All These Lighted Things asks the orchestra to dance, drawing fascinating new sounds from every instrument. The composer remarks that the piece is about the casting away of darkness; that it expresses an “overwhelming…happiness and joy”. Inspired by Thomas Merton’s poem about the oneness of the spiritual universe, the third movement in particular depicts the orchestra as a kind of “community”
Ravel had a revelatory visit to the United States in 1928, where he heard George Gershwin at the Cotton Club in Harlem. He gave a lecture the same year, instructing American musicians to “Take Jazz Seriously!”, and took his own advice by paying a generous tribute to it in his sassy, sumptuous Piano Concerto in G. A few years earlier, Ravel had composed La Valse, a kind of “biography” of the waltz from elegant beginning to increasingly wild end.
Ryan Wigglesworth’s Piano Concerto slowly awakens into an intriguing soundworld, then looks back through musical history. Piano and orchestra engage in a quizzical, sometimes combative conversation on the subject of folksongs, chorales, and gigues.
Steven Osborne’s versatile and responsive style is perfect for both concertos: the playful Ravel and the intriguing, understated Wigglesworth.
