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Aspen Music Festival

Conductor

Robert Spano

Orchestra

Aspen Chamber Symphony

Singer

Mezzo-soprano

Kelley O'Connor

Instrumentalist

Joyce Yang

Piano

Chamber Symphony: Spano With Joyce Yang, Kelley O'Connor

Aspen

United States

Klein Music Tent

Chamber Symphony: Spano With Joyce Yang, Kelley O'Connor: Haillí-Serenata Frank, G. L. (+3 More)

Public

Concert

Haillí-Serenata

Neruda Songs

Nights in the Gardens of Spain, G. 49

Love the Magician

Ayyappa swamy y

Approved

Acclaimed by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune “as a performer of scintillating energy and imagination…with a fearless, fiery quality,” Aspen alumna Joyce Yang returns for Falla’s Night in the Gardens of Spain. Not quite a piano concerto, the piece can be seen as musical tribute to the composer’s beloved Andalusia. You’ll hear influences of flamenco, guitar, and in Falla’s words, “melancholy and mystery.”

Falla spent seven years in Paris where he was influenced by Debussy, Ravel, and Dukas. When he returned to Spain in 1915 at the beginning of WW1, his first work was the ballet El Amor Brujo. The scenario was based on an Andalusian legend about a young widowed gypsy haunted by the ghost of her jealous husband who must exchange a kiss of perfect love with her new lover in order to rid her of her spectral ex.

Mezzo-soprano Kelly O’Connor, known for her “ravishingly velvet vocal tone” (San Francisco Chronicle) wowed last summer’s Aspen audience as the soloist in Mahler’s 3rd Symphony. Here she sings Neruda Songs, set to five love sonnets by the famous Chilean poet. In his note for the world premiere of Neruda Songs, Peter Lieberson shared his touching inspiration: “I discovered the love poems of Pablo Neruda by chance in the Albuquerque airport…. As I glanced through the poems, I immediately thought that I must set some of these for Lorraine.”

Lieberson’s wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, was a highly regarded mezzo-soprano who was known for her intensely emotional performances. Heartbreakingly, Neruda Songs would become Lieberson’s last collaboration with his wife; in 2006 she passed away after a long battle with breast cancer. She performed and recorded the work shortly before her death and was posthumously awarded a 2008 Grammy for Best Classical Vocal Performance. The Songs themselves earned the 2008 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.

The concert begins with a short prayer and “serenade to the past” by Gabriela Lena Frank, inspired by the composer’s visit with her mother to the site in Peru where the Spanish defeated the Inca Empire.

Enjoy a rich variety of moods and expression in this Hispanic-themed concert featuring two dynamic soloists!

English

Chamber Symphony: Spano With Joyce Yang, Kelley O'Connor by Frank, G. L., Lieberson, Falla, From (2024/2024), Conductor Robert Spano, Klein Music Tent, Aspen, United States

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