Emmy-award winner Bedoya conducts musician favorites
Emmy-award winner and Grammy nominee Miguel Harth-Bedoya will conduct the CSO in a program featuring two works by Maurice Ravel. Harth-Bedoya is the Music Director Laureate of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. He currently has several appointments directing higher education orchestral studies programs, and, as a sought-after conductor, has appeared with many major international and American orchestras throughout his career.
Born and raised in the American South, William Grant Still was a Guggenheim Fellow and earned several important commissions from the likes of the Cleveland Symphony and the 1939 New York World’s Fair. A celebrated composer renowned for his artistic excellence, he was the first African American to have a symphony performed by a leading American orchestra, the first to conduct a major American orchestra, and the first to have an opera performed by a major opera company. His Serenade is performed on this concert program in a nod to the CSO’s Project Aurora to elevate the music of superbly talented yet traditionally overlooked Black artists.
The CSO’s own Antonio Martí will be soloist on Alexander Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto—a remarkable and famous masterpiece of the repertoire for trumpet and orchestra. Never failing to amaze listeners, virtuosic skills are required from its soloist, and the orchestra plays gorgeous melodies interwoven with spirited Russian and Armenian folk music. Antonio Martí, who was appointed CSO principal trumpet in 2015, will demonstrate his mastery of the instrument on this grandiose concerto.
Composer Maurice Ravel is famous for his rich orchestration and the two pieces on this concert program are no exceptions. La valse (“The Waltz” in French) is no conventional ballroom waltz; instead, its listening journey reveals intense emotion and resounding depth in a post-World War I time. Ravel’s 1912 ballet Daphnis et Chloé, is a story of love, abduction, hope, and liberation from which Ravel produced two orchestral suites. With its light, pastoral mood, Suite No. 2 from the ballet’s final act is artful storytelling. The music travels through the strings, horns, and winds with playful dances thus allowing the audience to envision the joyful reunion.
Did You Know?
In 2009, Antonio Martí released a solo CD, “Path,” a recording of solo trumpet music from Spain, America, and Japan. In 2022, Martí released another album Spanish Journey with pianist Chee-Hang See.
“He made the symphony soar…There is plenty of reason in this town to import Harth-Bedoya’s passions, especially given how impressive he’s become.”
– Los Angeles Times
Of Daphnis et Chloé, Igor Stravinsky said it was “not only Ravel’s best work, but also one of the most beautiful products of all French music.”
Graphic: set design by Léon Bakst for the world premiere of Daphnis et Chloé, Paris 1912.
Listen Ahead!
Philip Smith performs the Arutiunian Trumpet Concerto with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Kurt Masur. Released in 2015, scroll down to hear a preview of this beautiful work.
