MINNEAPOLIS— Led by Peruvian conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, the Minnesota Orchestra presents a program that features folk rhythms from Latin America and Europe.
Grace Roepke, who grew up in Chanhassen, Minnesota, and now serves as principal harp of the Louisville Orchestra, will perform as soloist in Alberto Ginastera’s Harp Concerto. The concerto explores the musical life of Ginastera’s native Argentina, and features the harp’s many capabilities including its fiery energy and special effects. Roepke’s debut with the Minnesota Orchestra comes after she was named the Grand Prize winner of the FRIENDS of the Minnesota Orchestra Young Artists Competition in 2019, becoming the first harpist to receive the honor in the competition’s six-decade history.
The program will be performed at Orchestra Hall in downtown Minneapolis on Thursday, June 8, at 11 a.m., and Friday, June 9, at 8 p.m., with ticket prices ranging from $35 to $99. Choose Your Price tickets are available to all concertgoers for select seating sections ($5 minimum ticket price) for the Friday night performance. Free tickets are available for young listeners under the age of 18 for both concerts, thanks to the Orchestra’s Hall Pass program. For more information, visit minnesotaorchestra.org/hallpass. The Friday night performance will be broadcast live on stations of YourClassical Minnesota Public Radio.
The concerts include two works by composer Zoltan Kodály: his less familiar Concerto for Orchestra as well as the much-loved Dances of Galánta. Infused with Hungarian folk melodies, the Concerto for Orchestra is built around the structure of the concerto grosso, a Baroque-era form where music is passed between a small group of soloists and the full orchestra. In addition to his work as a composer, Kodály was an ethnomusicologist devoted to preserving and presenting traditional Hungarian folk music. His famed Dances of Galánta memorializes the music of his boyhood home and imposes his own symphonic structure on five dances that he heard a local Romani band play in his youth.
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio italien will conclude the program. Written when Tchaikovsky was living in isolation in Rome after his failed marriage, the episodic composition was inspired by the sights and sounds that the composer encountered at Carnival. The delightful ode opens with a military bugle call and closes with an interpretation of the tarantella, an Italian folk dance characterized by frenzied, quick steps.
