Palace Concerts

Artists

Orquesta Joven de Andalucía

Angela Gheorghiu, sopran

Víctor Pablo Pérez, conductor

Program

Triptych Mahler III

I

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

Nicht zu schnell, from the Piano Quartet in A minor (1876 Orchestrated by Colin Matthews)

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

«In quelle trine morbide», from Manon Lescaut (1892)

«Donde lieta usci», from La bohème (1895)

Adagetto for Orchestra in F major (1883)

«Un bel di vedremo», from Madama Butterfly (1904)

«O mio babbino caro», from Gianni Schicchi (1918)

II

Gustav Mahler

Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor (1902)

Puccini becomes a Mahlerian

The Andalusian Youth Orchestra closes the Mahler triptych with one of the composer’s most popular symphonies, the Fifth, especially known for its Adagietto, which Lucchino Visconti would make famous by obsessively using it as the soundtrack to his Death in Venice. But the concert by the young Andalusians led by Víctor Pablo Pérez includes some surprises. First, it opens with an orchestral arrangement made by the British Colin Matthews in 2009 of a young Mahler’s Piano Quartet. Second, in its central part, the recital becomes Puccinian, by hosting some well-known arias by the great Italian opera composer sung by one of the great divas of our time, Angela Gheorghiu. By the way, the Puccinian section of the concert includes an Adagetto that a young Puccini wrote for a small orchestra when Mahler had not even dreamed of doing his.