St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet — The Romantics

Music Director Stéphane Denève sends a valentine from the SLSO, saying, “Rachmaninoff’s music is a pure expression of love—the ecstasy of love, the light of love.” Nikolai Lugansky, among the supreme Rachmaninoff interpreters, is soloist in the Second Piano Concerto. Tchaikovsky celebrates the passionate connection of Romeo and Juliet, while Anna Clyne uses technology to enhance the sonic splendor of the SLSO. “With music,” says Denève, “we are never alone.”

A few things to know:

• Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto is a record of an artist’s survival. Deep in the stasis of depression, Rachmaninoff could see no way out. This concerto, dedicated to his therapist, was his companion as he took his first steps into the light.
• Tchaikovsky wrote, rewrote, and rewrote his tone poem Romeo and Juliet. It took fifteen years of changes for the work to grow from its first (negatively received) version to the final version. Even then, it took time for the public to grow to love this passionate work.

PALETTE is a Concerto for Orchestra that explores the correlations between music and art, where the symbiotic relationship between the two has resulted in seven movements and seven paintings. The work incorporates sonic enhancements through a real-time electronic processing technique called the Augmented Orchestra.