A new tradition begins for symphony
Christmas Eve concert this year at Santa Fe’s Lensic
The Santa Fe Symphony will launch what it hopes will become a new tradition with a Christmas Eve concert at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Monday.
“We’re delighted that we have that date,” conductor Guillermo Figueroa said. “Obviously, its a very festive evening, so we want to create a program that emphasizes that.”
The concert will feature Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, Carl Maria Von Weber’s Overture to Oberon. Acclaimed pianists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe will perform Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos and their own arrangement of themes from Bizet’s “Carmen.”
The musicians also will play Berlioz’s “Trio of the Young Ishmaelites.”
“It’s the moment when the shepherds are in the presence of the holy family,” Figueroa said. “The three boy shepherds serenade the baby Jesus with two flutes and a harp.”
Handel penned his Music for the Royal Fireworks for King George II in 1749 for a celebration of the end of the War of Austrian Succession.
“It’s one of the most celebratory pieces ever with the trumpets and the horns and the timpani,” Figueroa said.
Poulenc wrote his Concerto in D Minor for Two Pianos in 1932. Concertos for two pianos are comparatively rare; the piece is one of the composer’s most popular works, knitting together a multiplicity of styles from the music of Parisian dance halls to a Mozart homage to Balinese gamelan ensembles.
“It exploits the differences; pitting one piano against another,” Figueroa said. “It’s lighthearted music.”
Called “the rock stars of the classical world”
by the Miami Herald, Anderson and Roe formed their musical partnership at the Juilliard School. Widely known for their daring four-hand piano technique, the pair seek to redefine piano music through stylish arrangements of both popular and classical works.
“Expect a lot of ferocious technique and virtuosity,” Figueroa said.