Random Acts

Altan brings Irish music to Popejoy Hall in Albuquerque; the Bollywood Club Invasion takes over the Santa Fe Community Convention Center; violinist Jinjoo Cho plays with the Santa Fe Symphony; and Galician bagpiper Carlos Núñez performs at the Lensic Perf

Jinjoo Cho, who won the gold medal at the Ninth Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis in 2014, appears with the Santa Fe Symphony as the soloist in Glazunov’s Violin Concerto, a late-Romantic work written in 1904, the year before its composer assumed the directorship of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. After intermission comes another full-scale piece from the opening decade of the 20th century, Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. The conductor Bruno Walter, who was employed as Mahler’s assistant when the piece was composed in 1901-1902, described it as “a work of strength and sound self-reliance, its face turned squarely towards life, and its basic mood one of optimism.” It includes the most famous movement in any Mahler symphony, the Adagietto for strings and harp. This pensive movement was apparently intended as a coded love song from Mahler to his wife, Alma, but it became more associated with exequial contexts, being played at the funerals of Serge Koussevitzky, Robert Kennedy, and Leonard Bernstein (among many other notables) and helping set the fatalistic mood in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film Guillermo Figueroa conducts this concert at 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 19, at the Lensic Performing Arts Center (211 W. San Francisco St.). Tickets ($42-$80) can be acquired from the Symphony directly (505-983-1414) or by calling 505-988-1234 or visiting www.ticketssantafe .org. — James M. Keller