Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg Appears with Marin Alsop and the BSO in Final Program of the Season, June 7–10

Baltimore, Md. (PRWEB) April 24, 2012

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestras 2011–2012 season culmi­nates in Nadja Salerno-Sonnenbergs perfor­mance of Tchaikovskys Violin Concerto, led by Music Director Marin Alsop, on Thursday, June 7 at 8 p.m., Friday, June 8 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, June 10 at 3 p.m. at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and Saturday, June 9 at 8 p.m. at the Music Center at Strathmore. Always a champion of new music, Marin Alsop will introduce Symphony No. 4, From Mission San Juan Bautista, by recent Pulitzer Prize winner and Peabody Institute faculty member Kevin Puts; a piece inspired by the handsome old Cali­fornia mission featured in Alfred Hitchocks classic, Vertigo. The program will conclude with music from Stravinskys revo­lu­tionary ballet The Rite of Spring, whose 1913 premiere is recog­nized as one of the most contro­versial debuts in the history of music. The rarely-orchestrated Wagner Tuben used in this perfor­mance of The Rite of Spring is a gift from Beth Green Pierce in memory of her father, Elwood I. Green. Please see below for complete program details.

Just last week, American composer Kevin Puts won the Pulitzer Prize in music for his first opera. Histor­i­cally, his works have been well-received in the Baltimore area; the BSOs previous perfor­mances of Rivers Rush and Network were proclaimed pris­matic by the Baltimore Sun and fasci­nating and well wrought by The Wash­ington Post, respec­tively. This season heralds yet another landmark symphonic work by the applauded composer with the perfor­mance of his Symphony No. 4, From Mission San Juan Bautista. Commis­sioned by the Cabrillo Festival and premiered by Marin Alsop in the summer of 2007, Puts Fourth Symphony is a beau­tiful, neo-Romantic work that exudes nostalgia for an earlier time and place.

Eight months after his ill-conceived marriage to Antonina Milyukova, Tchaikovsky sought escape on the shores of Switzer­lands Lake Geneva. There, he and his brother Modest were visited by the gifted 22-year-old violinist Yosif Kotek, a compo­sition pupil of Tchaikovsky’s in Moscow. In addition to comfort and support, Kotek provided both artistic inspi­ration and tech­nical advice for Tchaikovsky’s recently begun violin concerto. The piece was finished only a month later, but its premiere in Vienna wasnt for another two and a half years. This aston­ish­ingly gifted superstar violinist’s perfor­mance might have awakened the composer from a dream of the perfect perfor­mance to applaud in his night­shirt, hailed the Madison Capital Times after witnessing Nadja Salerno-Sonnenbergs perfor­mance of Tchaikovskys Violin Concerto with the Madison Symphony Orchestra. The wildly popular American violinist is a frequent soloist with the BSO and is admired for her passion, inter­pretive power and compelling stage presence.

May 29, 1913, is a day that will forever be remem­bered for one of the most noto­rious scandals in music history. That evenings perfor­mance at Th