On September 30 and October 1 and 2, the Houston Symphony presents Gershwin Concerto in F, featuring Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1 and Gershwin’s Concerto in F, one of Gershwin’s many pieces that brought jazz into the classical world. One year after writing his fusion of jazz and classical music, Gershwin set out to show the … Continued
On March 26, 28, and 29, conductor Matthias Pintscher and pianist Cédric Tiberghien team up for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, an eclectic program of works by Mozart, Debussy, and Webern. In this post, discover Mozart’s dark and stormy Piano Concerto No. 20, possibly the composer’s most popular work for piano and orchestra. In keeping with … Continued
This month, the Houston Symphony presents a two-week Schumann Festival featuring the great Romantic composer’s symphonies, concertos, chamber music, songs, and more. In this post, discover how Schumann may have secretly encoded his wife’s name into his passionate Piano Concerto. Composed in a mere two weeks in May 1841 (between the premiere of the First Symphony and … Continued
On January 30 and February 1 and 2, the Houston Symphony presents Beethoven 7, a program featuring world-renowned pianist Kirill Gerstein in not one, but two virtuoso works by Franz Liszt. In this post, discover Liszt’s innovative Piano Concerto No. 1, a masterpiece that took 23 years to complete. The first sketches that would wend their … Continued
On November 15, 16, and 17, world-renowned pianist Emanuel Ax joins the Houston Symphony for Ax Plays Beethoven, featuring Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1. In this post, discover the musical twists and turns of this bold and daring masterpiece. Though Beethoven’s C major piano concerto is known today as his first, it was actually the … Continued
On September 27, 28, and 29, Music Director Andrés Orozco-Estrada presents Gershwin’s Piano Concerto & Porgy and Bess, a concert of 20th-century masterpieces from the Western hemisphere. Our guest artist is world-renowned pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who performs Gershwin’s jazzy Piano Concerto in F. In this post, discover this uniquely American showpiece for piano and orchestra. … Continued