Carlos Chávez’s one-movement Sinfonía India is based on traditional melodies of Indigenous tribes from the western states of his home country of Mexico, fused with European classical elements. Of special note are a solo horn singing a tune from the Yaqui people of Sonora and a percussion section ...

This music by a young Samuel Coleridge-Taylor premiered at Britain’s Three Choirs Festival in 1899, then was not performed again until its revival at the same still-active festival in 2021. It made its way to the U.S. for the first time just this past September. Slow and anthem-like, the overture...

Modest Mussorgsky took as inspiration for this brilliant work—a memorial to his friend, the Russian painter Viktor Hartmann—ten colorful images in a posthumous exhibition of Hartmann’s work. Pictures was originally a virtusoso showpiece for solo piano, but now it is most widely known in this lush...

Lili Boulanger’s Of a Spring Morning invites us into a vivid scene, one buzzing with energy and excitement. Over the span of just a few minutes, her music paints shimmering colors and showcases delicate, beautiful growth, not unlike the first few moments of a fresh spring day.

Of this work—which drew jeers at its 1913 premiere—Stravinsky wrote: it “represents pagan Russia and is unified by a single idea: the
mystery and great surge of the creative power of Spring.” Vibrant sounds of nature set the scene for the story, an imagined pagan ritual in
which a sacrificial vir...

Ravel’s simple and beautiful ballet score, based on five well-known French fairy tales, sounds like nothing so much as the innocent,
easily entranced mind of a child. It is often played as a short orchestral suite, but these performances feature the complete work as Ravel
originally wrote it.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 2, chief among the works he completed during a despairing summer in the country while reckoning with his impending hearing loss, is as sunny a piece of music as he ever wrote, with an atmosphere of non-stop energy that made it seem audacious to those who first heard it. L...

Although not much time had elapsed since Beethoven composed his Second Piano Concerto, this one does suggest an advance, especially in the sense of a specific and vivid human and musical presence. Pianist and Minnesota Orchestra creative partner Jon Kimura Parker has performed this concerto since...

The title of Simon’s composition comes from the ancient Greek poet Homer’s Iliad—specifically, a passage from Book XXII that was of such importance to Beethoven that he copied it into his personal diary in an 1815 entry: “But Fate now conquers; I am hers; and yet not she shall share in my renown;...

The Minnesota Orchestra commissioned Jaakko Kuusisto—a longtime friend and collaborator of Music Director Osmo Vänskä—to compose
a new symphony as a capstone to Vänskä’s final season. When Kuusisto passed away tragically in February at age 48, the work was not yet
ready for performance, but his b...

The piano often takes the lead in this double concerto from the composer’s youth, followed closely by violin, and the brilliant conclusion
points to the greatness of the composer’s mature work.

The finale of Ginastera’s Concerto for Strings is colorful, rhythmic and almost breathless, showcasing folk idioms and changing meters.

This recent work—an homage to Lift Every Voice and Sing, a song often referred to as the Black National Anthem—brings out the sonority
and virtuosity of the strings to feature the familiar melodic material, while uncovering new timbres and sounds.

The Minnesota Orchestra performed Joel Thompson's Seven Last Words of the Unarmed with the Minnesota Chorale, Twin Cities Choral Partners, and 29:11 International Exchange May 19-21, 2022.

Thomas Wilkins, conductor
Marcus Simmons, soloist

"Bolghar is a city in Tatarstan, founded in the eighth century, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the 16th century, it was incorporated into Russia. Although the present-day Tatar capital is Kazan, many Tatars see in Bolghar a glimpse of their ancient Muslim Bulgar way of life.

Because of the...

"Scored for organ and orchestra, Over and Under explores the possible uniform and divergent relationship between such immense instrumental bodies. This relationship evolves so that by the end of the piece, the organ and orchestra have ultimately switched roles, and in order to reach this outcome,...

"The majority of the work on this piece was completed during a particularly dour and sedentary year. With all the loneliness, anxiety and pessimism floating about, I wanted to create a piece that would be characterized by the exact opposite of all those emotions." —Bobby Ge

Watch the full concer...

"Wind Map is inspired by visualizations of global wind patterns: massive amounts of weather are fed into a supercomputer, which then produces a live “wind map.” The swirls and swoops are color-coded: areas of blue and green denote relative calm and light breezes, while red and purple represent de...

"My mother passed in July 2017 from cancer. Her entire life could be summarized as endeavoring against opposition. This was true even right up to the end as she battled the suffocating effects of lung cancer. As I sat in wait with her in the hospital over her last month, I became an active partic...

Lumina explores the spectrum of light and dark and the murkiness in between. Using swift contrasts between bright, sharp timbres and cloudy textures and dense harmonies, the piece captures sudden bursts of radiance amongst the eeriness of shadows.

Watch the full concert > https://bit.ly/3G1QyG0

Close Up at a Distance is a collection of five short movements (performed without pause) that are inspired by an imagined travelogue in Google Earth.

Watch the full concert > https://bit.ly/3G1QyG0

Li Huanzhi's Spring Festival Overture depicts a scene in the Shanbei region of revelers celebrating the Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, and the music’s themes come from that region’s folk music. In the overture, we hear sounds reminiscent of fireworks and parades, along with a ...

Composer and performer Gao Hong took the stage with the Minnesota Orchestra for the world premiere of her new work, Guangxi Impression, Concerto for Pipa and Orchestra. The commission celebrates the province of Guangxi in southern China, which is made up of a rich diverse populations that include...

The Minnesota Orchestra gave the world premiere of Finnish composer Jaakko Kuusisto’s arrangement of Circle of Unity by Vietnamese composer, performer and artist Trinh Cong Son (1939-2001). Kuusisto’s arrangement, based on the version by Vietnamese musician Hô Quang Hiêu, is energetic and fast-pa...