Gregg Whiteside

Join us this Sunday at 2 pm for a very special treat. It's the Philadelphia Orchestra's May 24th LIVE broadcast of a concert tribute to the Orchestra’s former Music Director Wolfgang Sawallisch. This was the first live Philadelphia Orchestra broadcast in 13 years, and a memorable event it was, featuring a performance by violinist Gil Shaham of the Brahms Violin Concerto. Yannick Nézet-Séguin is on the podium.

Virtuosic soloists from The Philadelphia Orchestra will be featured in five sparkling and propulsive works by J.S. Bach this Sunday. The performance is further enhanced by Baroque specialist Nicholas McGegan, who brought a fresh and animated approach to these familiar masterworks when the performances took place at Verizon Hall back in mid-April.

This Sunday at 2 pm, Garrick Ohlssen is guest soloist as Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducts The Philadelphia Orchestra in a performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, and two lush orchestral works by Richard Strauss, Death and Transfiguration and a suite from his opera Der Rosenkavalier.

During intermission, WRTI's Jim Cotter speaks with Garrick Ohlssen, and Susan Lewis sits down for a talk with The Philadelphia Orchestra's Associate Principal Concertmaster Juliette Kang.

This Sunday, July 28th at 2 pm, our Philadelphia Orchestra In Concert broadcast brings us guest conductor Andrey Boreyko, music director of the Dusseldorf Symphony, and percussionist Colin Currie, in a rebroadcast of a program from Verizon Hall last March.

Venerated conductor Christoph von Dohnányi conducts the music of two Viennese masters this Sunday, July 21st  at 2 pm, in a Philadelphia Orchestra concert from last March at Verizon Hall.

Franz Schubert's beloved "Unfinished" Symphony has taken a rightful place among the standards of the repertoire, even if we may never understand why he abandoned the work after just two enduring movements. And Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 4, "Romantic," was his first great symphonic success, a breathtaking work that inspires audiences every time it's performed.

Composed 52 years apart, the two works are tailor-made for the dense, glorious string sound of The Fabulous Philadelphians.

Christoph von Dohnanyi talks about the works at Intermission with WRTI's Jim Cotter.  Also, during Intermission, WRTI's Susan Lewis discusses the importance of the conductor's approach when performing these two works with Philadelphia Orchestra Concertmaster David Kim.

It's Viennese Masters with The Philadelphia Orchestra, this Sunday from 2 to 4 pm. Gregg Whiteside is host and producer.

Detailed Program Notes Here at The Philadelphia Orchestra's Website

PROGRAM:

Schubert: Symphony in B minor ("Unfinished")

INTERMISSION

Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 ("Romantic")

Guest conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi conducts The Philadelphia Orchestra in a concert from last March that offers the spirit of Mozart a connecting thread. Perhaps not surprising since, in 1787, the 16-year-old Beethoven traveled to Vienna from his native Bonn to study with Mozart. Though little is known about their encounter, Beethoven, according to legend, impressed the master, but could stay in Vienna only a short time before being called home to tend to his dying mother. Although he never would never see Mozart again, who had died by the time he returned to Vienna to study with Haydn, Beethoven greatly esteemed him as a model.

In the first half of the program this afternoon, we’ll hear one of Mozart’s most dramatic piano concertos, Number 20, in the passionate key of D minor, one which Beethoven himself particularly  admired, and for which he in fact wrote the cadenzas that pianist Rudolph Buchbinder will perform.

During intermission, we’ll hear from both maestros Dohnanyi and Buchbinder as they speak with WRTI's Jim Cotter. The program will conclude with Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, a turning point not only in Beethoven’s career, but in the history of music!

The concert begins with one of Witold Lutoslawski's most accessible and highly expressive works from the  1940s and '50s, his Funeral Music. Gregg Whiteside is host and producer. Sunday, July 14, 2 to 4 pm.

More information, including program notes, on The Philadelphia Orchestra's website

Christoph von Dohnányi - Conductor
Rudolf Buchbinder - Piano

PROGRAM:
Lutoslawski - Funeral Music
Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 20, K. 466
INTERMISSION
Beethoven - Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica")

Join us Sunday, July 7th at 2 pm, as Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads The Philadelphia Orchestra in a program from late January at Verizon Hall featuring two composers who actually met during the 1865 premiere of Tristan und Isolde, Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner.

Join us to hear The Philadelphians in a live concert recording from October, 2012, featuring Bernstein’s Serenade, Brahms’s Symphony No. 4, and Gabriela Lena Frank’s Concertino Cusqueno. Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducts. Violinist Joshua Bell is soloist. Gregg Whiteside is producer and host. Sunday, June 30, 2 to 4 pm.

PROGRAM:

Gabriela Lena Frank - Concertino Cusqueño (world premiere)
Bernstein - Serenade (after Plato's Symposium)
INTERMISSION
Brahms - Symphony No. 4

Simon Rattle will be back on the podium this Sunday at 2 pm for a Philadelphia Orchestra performance from late May of Beethoven’s "Pastoral" Symphony, with its vivid scenes of gathering thunderstorms, wandering brooks, and breezy countrysides. We’ll also hear Webern's Passacaglia, and Three fragments from Alban Berg's shattering opera Wozzeck, both of which received their U.S. premieres in Philadelphia as part of Leopold Stokowski's vision for 20th-century music. 

This Sunday from 2 to 4 pm, The Philadelphia Orchestra renews its historic connection with the great Finnish master Jean Sibelius (Stokowski led the U.S. premieres of his last three symphonies) as Simon Rattle will conduct the final two symphonies, Nos. 6 and 7, together without interruption, from a May, 2013 concert.