An overture about an Italian soubrette in Algiers, a symphony by a German composer in Italy, and a Russian concerto that had its first performance in New York City. It’s a small world on the next concerts of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, as composers find inspiration and support from beyond the borders of their native lands.
Maxim Lando will be the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s lesser-heard Piano Concerto No. 2, introduced in New York in 1881. The work was criticized by its dedicatee, Nikolai Rubinstein – granted, more diplomatically than he had Tchaikovsky’s evergreen Piano Concerto No. 1, which he had dismissed outright, before finally taking up its cause to the benefit of both music and performer. Be that as it may, Rubinstein died in Paris not long after his assessment of the 2nd, the longest and most lyrical of Tchaikovsky three keyboard concertos.
Also on the program will be Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 – known as the “Italian” – which had its origins in a European tour undertaken by the composer between 1829 and 1831. Mendelssohn was 21 years-old when he first arrived in Italy, and the experience threw him into ecstasies. He did his best to capture his ebullience in music. The symphony’s first performance in London in 1833, which Mendelssohn himself conducted, made him the most emulated composer in England for the remainder of the 19th century.
At first, Mendelssohn described it as “the jolliest work I have yet written.” However, despite its overwhelmingly positive reception (Ignaz Moscheles tells us the premiere was met with thunderous applause), the composer began to feel a nagging dissatisfaction with it. He revised the symphony in 1834, with plans for further changes, and the score was never published in his lifetime. He even claimed that it caused him some of the bitterest moments of his career. Naturally, it went on to become his most beloved symphony.
Rossini claimed that he wrote his opera “L’Italiana in Algieri” in 18 days. The plot is a mash-up of seria “rescue opera” and orientalist comedy, as an Italian woman shipwrecked off the coast of Algiers is captured and delivered to the Bey’s seraglio. The Bey wants to make her one of his wives, but she is a wily Rossini heroine, so of course she manages not only to outwit him but to spring her lover who happens also to have been enslaved. The manic intensity we often associate with the composer is evident in the overture, which will open this weekend’s concerts.
Rossen Milanov will conduct the program twice with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. No passport necessary, this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 4:00 p.m.
For more information, visit princetonsymphony.org.
