Grand Opera House Kicks off Season with Heroics

Maestro David Amado spotlights pianist Gabriela Martinez.

The Delaware Symphony Orchestra will open its 2014-2015 season on Sept. 19 at The Grand Opera House in Wilmington with the first of the DSO’s five-program Classics Concert Series. It will be led by Maestro David Amado, now in his 12th season as the DSO’s music director. Amado’s program, “Heroes and Heroines,” will open with Beethoven’s dramatic Piano Concerto No. 5, the “Emperor.” Beethoven’s last piano concerto, a classic example of his “heroic style,” was composed early in 1809. The influence of Bonaparte, the French Revolution and the German enlightenment on Beethoven were considerable factors in explaining the development of the “heroic” style that came to dominate his middle period. The featured soloist for the “Emperor” is the young pianist Gabriela Martinez. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1984, she has won numerous awards and amassed an impressive list of performances. Her most recent awards include first prize and audience award at the Anton G. Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Dresden. She was a semifinalist in the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, where she also received a Jury Discretionary Award. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Ravinia Festival and the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, and she has performed in Salzburg, Copenhagen, Paris, Rome and Venice, among other places. Gustavo Dudamel, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic raves, “She is incredible, she is enormously talented, she is simply a genius.” The second half of the program will show DSO’s ensemble and colors in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s exotic Scheherazade, the musical retelling of episodes from “One Thousand and One Nights.” The work evokes the cliffhanger stories the beautiful princess Scheherazade tells to the sultan, attempting to postpone her execution. A favorite with both orchestras and audiences, Scheherazade is a display of orchestral virtuosity, and contains some of the most graphic and effective musical storytelling ever written. For more, click delawaresymphony.org or call 656-7442.

 

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