PROKOFIEV - ROMEO AND JULIET PROGRAM NOTES AND COMPOSER FEATURE

NRO is pleased to welcome Grammy®-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta to the podium for a wide-ranging program sure to please. Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta has chosen to begin the concert with Roberto Sierra’s Fandangos, a colorful and evocative transmutation of melodic ideas by Antonio Soler and Luigi Boccherini filtered through Sierra’s imagination. He preserves the dance element while taking full advantage of spectacular orchestral colors. Time no longer anchors the music to a single era, and this fanciful work is an elegant example of multi-dimensionality.

IN RECOGNITION AND GRATITUDE OF THIS EVENING’S UNDERWRITERS:

SPONSOR

Shaw Cancer Center & Breast Imaging Clinic

SEASON UNDERWRITERS

Julianna Wiegand Burger

Barbara and Jim Calvin

Barbara Strauss and Paul Finkel

Robert Follett

Robin Hadley

Kathie and Michael Massey*

Anne Mills

Pam and Sonny Wiegand

SERIES UNDERWRITERS

Mark Addison

Anonymous

Robert and Cynthia Benson

Libby Bortz

Ann Brewster

M.A. Deen

Annette and Ken Hallock

Jane King

Bonnie Kirschenbaum

Patrice and Ron Lara

Helen Lemay

Anne Mead

Samuel L. Bufford and Julia Metzger

Riverwalk Center, Breckenridge

Wednesday, August 2 at 6:00 PM

In memory of Charles “Chas” Wetherbee

Join us in wearing pink to support a cause close to our hearts – the fight against cancer.

JoAnn Falletta, conductor

Sadie Hamrin, violin

ON THE PROGRAM

Roberto Sierra (b.1953) Fandangos

Jonathan Leshnoff (b. 1973)

Violin Concerto No. 1

Sadie Hamrin, violin

I. Allegro

II. Slow

III. Scherzo

IV. Slow-Fast

V. Elegy

-INTERMISSION-

Michael Molloy

Jana Edwards and Rick Poppe

Juliet Whitcomb and Elliot Schrage

Alan and Kathy Sonnanstine

Karen and James Warrick

Pam Piper Yeung and Dr. Kai Yiu Yeung

CONCERT UNDERWRITERS

Terri and Jerry Belver

Kathy and John Landon

*Deceased

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Romeo and Juliet Suite, Op. 64

The Montagues and Capulets (Suite 2 #1)

Juliet the Young Girl (Suite 2 #2)

Danse (Suite 2 #4)

Friar Lawrence (Suite 2 #3)

Masks (Suite 1 #5)

Romeo at Juliet’s before parting (Suite 2 #5)

The Death of Tybalt (Suite 1 #7)

Dance of the Antilles Girls (Suite 2 #6)

Romeo at the Grave of Juliet (Suite 2 #7)

To learn more about Chas Wetherbee, please see page 88.

NRO violinist Sadie Hamrin will be featured in Jonathan Leshnoff’s Violin Concerto No. 1, a work composed for and premiered by Charles Wetherbee, who had such incredible ties to NRO and Colorado. It is the perfect way to remember this inspiring violinist — through a marvelous concerto by one of America’s leading composers.

Shakespeare’s tragedy “Romeo and Juliet” resonates across the centuries, inspiring several composers and none more intensely than Sergei Prokofiev. Composed in 1935 after Prokofiev returned to the Soviet Union following a self-imposed 15-year exile, the Bolshoi Ballet deemed the hefty score “impossible to dance to.” Prokofiev excerpted a pair of suites, and the music created such excitement that the Kirov Ballet bested their Bolshoi rival in offering the first Soviet performance. Prokofiev’s initial intention was to provide a happy ending, as Friar Lawrence intended, with the young lovers dancing from the tomb.

Political considerations intervened, and he finally acceded to demands to restore Shakespeare’s original ending. The tale may be beset with woe, but the music is sublime. Do not miss this opportunity to hear one of Prokofiev’s most brilliant scores.

© Eric T. Williams

Composer Feature

Roberto Sierra

For more than four decades, the works of Grammy-nominated and Latin Grammy winner Roberto Sierra have been part of the repertoire of many of the leading orchestras, ensembles and festivals in the USA and Europe. At the inaugural concert of the 2002 world renowned Proms in London, his Fandangos was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a concert that was broadcast by both the BBC Radio and Television throughout the UK and Europe.

In 2021 Roberto Sierra was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 2017 he was awarded the Tomás Luis de Victoria Prize, the highest honor given in Spain to a composer of Spanish or Latin American origin. In 2010 he was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2003 he was awarded the Academy Award in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Roberto Sierra’s Music may be heard on CD’s by Naxos, EMI, IBS Classics, UMG’s EMARCY, New World Records, Albany Records, Koch, New Albion, Koss Classics, BMG, Fleur de Son and other labels.

Roberto Sierra was born in 1953 in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. He studied composition both in Puerto Rico and Europe, where one of his teachers was György Ligeti at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg, Germany. The works of Roberto Sierra are published principally by Subito Music Publishing (ASCAP).

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