The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert

Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducts one of the supreme monuments in Western music, and the work that initiated the great rediscovery of Bach’s music when the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted it in Berlin in 1829 – the St. Matthew Passion.

Guest conductor Stephane Deneve leads the Philadelphians in a program from last month at Verizon Hall, dedicated to Russian dance music.

Join us for an all-Rachmaninoff program this Sunday at 1 pm, on the radio at 90.1 FM and around the world at wrti.org. The Philadelphians perform Rachmaninoff’s choral-symphonic setting of Edgar Allan Poe’s haunting poem, The Bells, which received its U.S. premiere here in Philadelphia in 1920 with Leopold Stokowski conducting.

This Sunday's Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcast on WRTI 90.1 FM, led by Russian conductor Vladimir Jurowski, brings us two works by J.S. Bach, performed at Verizon Hall this past February, that give us a taste of the Baroque equivalents of the symphony and the concerto - the Orchestral Suite No. 2, and the Keyboard Concerto No. 1, more modest in size, but no less ambitious in vision.

J.S. Bach’s 329th birthday is Monday, March 31st. In recent years, the iconic composer’s music has been embraced by period performers, and played less frequently by big symphony orchestras. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, The Philadelphia Orchestra takes a very modern - yet historical - approach to his music in WRTI's Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcast on Sunday, March 30th at 1 pm.

The broadcast also features Bach’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and music of Strauss and Mahler.

Conductor Donald Runnicles will be back here in Philadelphia next week to conduct the Orchestra in works by Benjamin Britten, Arvo Part, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. We’ll look ahead to those performances by looking back this coming Sunday at 1 pm, as we bring you an archival broadcast from a concert in February of 2005, which saw Maestro Runnicles on the podium conducting the Orchestra in the year he made his debut with the Philadelphians, directing works by Beethoven and Elgar.

This Sunday at 1 pm it's the third and final week of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s January Tchaikovsky Celebration on WRTI. The young Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev will be on the podium for his Philadelphia Orchestra debut, leading the Philadelphians in works by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky-Ravel, and Rimsky-Korsakov.

A work originally written for piano has become a staple of the orchestral repertoire. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, the most well-known version combines the mastery of two composers from different generations - one Russian, and one French.

On this Sunday's Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcast on WRTI, we'll hear a performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. As WRTI's Jim Cotter reports the instrument on which it is being played would have sounded very familiar to the composer.

In 1878 Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote a violin concerto for the Hungarian violinist Leopold Auer. It was to be performed on Auer's 1690 Stradivarius, which is today the main instrument of the Russian-born Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman.

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Tchaikovsky celebration from this past January continues on WRTI this Sunday at 1 pm with Associate Conductor Cristian Macelaru joined by Principal Cellist Hai-Ye