Ravinia 2025 Issue 2

George Gershwin’s Concerto in F (1925) July 12: CSO / Marin Alsop conductor / Jean-Yves Thibaudet piano This performance marks the 100th anniversary of this work, which ranks among the popular and oft-played American works in the form. After attending the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue , conductor Walter Damrosch immediately commissioned Gershwin to write a full-scale concerto, and the result was this work, which, unlike the Rhap- sody , featured an orchestration entirely by him. The work contains elements of jazz, blues, and ragtime but is solidly anchored in the classical genre. Gershwin and this work have an extraordinary history at Ravinia. The composer served as the soloist for a July 25, 1936, Chicago Symphony program that showcased both the Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue , not to mention a then newly assembled Suite from the com- poser’s opera, Porgy and Bess , which had premiered a year earlier. This performance will feature French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Alsop, who recorded this piece in 2009 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and who both present it regularly. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, op. 74, Pathétique (1893) July 12: CSO / Marin Alsop conductor The Chicago Symphony’s July 12 program is the only one to make this list twice, because Alsop has stocked it with two un- questionably stellar works, ending with this one by a composer who produced many in his career. Think ballets like The Nut- cracker or Swan Lake , or one of the most-played love themes in all of instrumental music (from his Romeo and Juliet ). The Sixth Symphony was Tchaikovsky’s last work in the form, and he conducted the premiere in St. Petersburg just nine days before his death. The Russian composer began working on this piece in February 1893 and soon became consumed by it. In a letter to his brother, he described it as one of his best works: “I told you that I had completed a symphony which suddenly displeased me, and I tore it up. Now I have composed a new symphony, which I certainly shall not tear up.” Unlike most symphonies, this one ends with a slow movement, Adagio Lamentoso (Slow and Lamenting) , and it is the only one of the composer’s works in the form to end in a somber minor key. RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 15 E.CAREN(THIBAUDET);PATRICKGIPSON/RAVINIA(ALSOP)