Ludovic Morlot makes his San Diego Symphony debut
8 January
This weekend, Ludovic Morlot makes his conducting debut with the San Diego Symphony in two performances focusing on the music of his countryman, Camille Saint-Saëns.
The orchestra is joined by violinist Jeff Thayer for the Saint-Saëns’ bold and dramatic Violin Concerto No. 3, written in 1880 for Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate. An audience favourite, the piece alternates effortlessly between beautiful lyricism and dazzling technical displays of virtuosity.
Alongside this, another Saint-Saëns favourite displays the huge colour and range of a symphony orchestra augmented by a number of unusual instruments, including four-hand piano, contrabassoon, and numerous percussion instruments, as well as the magnificence of a pipe organ. Although the piece is known as the “Organ Symphony”, the organ is not treated as a soloist, but another colour in the orchestra. Saint-Saëns was an organist himself, as well as a formidable pianist, and his familiarity with the instrument is clear in his idiosyncratic writing in this thunderously majestic piece.
Ludovic previously recorded the work with Seattle Symphony:
In between these two masterpieces, the orchestra performs a short piece by Augusta Holmès, a French composer of Irish extraction. Night and Love is one of the composer’s most well-known pieces and features a gorgeously romantic melody.
The programme is completed by Bioluminescence Chaconne by Gabriella Smith, a young Californian composer with a terrifically inventive ear for instrumental colors and a deep fascination with nature.