Composer as Hero Festival
Join Music Director Juraj Valčuha and the Houston Symphony for two concerts exploring the idea of the “Composer as Hero.” The journey begins with Shostakovich’s symphonic rebellion against authoritarianism and concludes with Strauss’s unapologetic self-portrait as the hero of his own musical adventure — complete with music critics cast as villains!
Journey to Light: Valčuha conducts Shostakovich 10
Under Joseph Stalin’s brutal regime, being an artist meant extreme censorship, unimaginable pressure, and life-or-death stakes. No composer of the era embodied this more than Dmitri Shostakovich, and in his Symphony No. 10—the first of his symphonies to be composed after Stalin’s death—his newfound artistic freedom unleashed an explosive torrent of earth-shaking emotional power. Music Director Juraj Valčuha leads this extraordinary darkness-to-light journey, and Baiba Skride heats up Jones Hall with Britten’s fiery Violin Concerto.
Tickets
Friday, Nov. 21
7:30 P.M. at Jones Hall
Saturday, Nov. 22
7:30 P.M. at Jones Hall
Sunday, Nov. 23
2:00 P.M. at Jones Hall
“
The best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much perish. You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear. There's more of a chance then that they'll survive.
― Dmitri Shostakovich
Thanksgiving Weekend: Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1
You’ll know it from the first note! Tchaikovsky’s famous Piano Concerto No. 1 has everything you could want in a piano concerto: jaw-dropping virtuosity, finger-flying fireworks, and impassioned melodies you’ll be humming on the way home. Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben serves up epic battle scenes, tender love scenes, and gripping drama, portrayed through soaring music.
Tickets
Friday, Nov. 28
7:30 P.M. at Jones Hall
Saturday, Nov. 29
7:30 P.M. at Jones Hall
Sunday, Nov. 30
2:00 P.M. at Jones Hall
“
Don’t think that I imagine I’ll become a great artist. It’s simply that I want to do that to which I am drawn. Whether I shall be a famous composer or an impoverished teacher, I shall still think I have done the right thing, and I shall have no painful right to grumble at Fate or at people.
― Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky