The Palm Beach Symphony has commissioned one of the most celebrated young composers in the country to write a fanfare for the ensemble’s 40th anniversary in 2013.
Nico Muhly, 30, a Vermont-born composer who studied at the Juilliard School, is perhaps best-known for his score for The Reader, the 2008 Stephen Daldry film starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. He’s written orchestral works for the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony, choral pieces for the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and collaborated with the Icelandic pop singer Björk.
His opera, Two Boys, based on a true story of cybercrime, premiered at the English National Opera last year and will be seen in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2013-14 season. Michael Finn, the Palm Beach Symphony’s executive director and former associate dean at the Juilliard School, said Muhly had a compositional voice, even as a student, that Finn found compelling.
Finn said he’s asked Muhly to use the trumpet motif from Debussy’s La Mer as part of the piece, which will be scored for precisely the same instrumentation as Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man: three trumpets, three trombones, four horns, a tuba, timpani and percussion. The work will be performed in the 2013-14 season, Finn said.
The symphony’s 2012-13 season opens Dec. 9 at the Society of the Four Arts with the Dance Preludes for clarinet and orchestra of the Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, on a program with sinfoniettas by Astor Piazzolla and Francis Poulenc, a Divertissement by Jacques Ibert, and conclude with the Prokofiev Classical Symphony (No. 1 in D, Op. 25).
The 39th season of the orchestra will be commemorated in a Jan. 6 concert at the Flagler Museum, with Dvorak’s Czech Suite (Op. 39), the Symphony No. 39 (in E-flat, K. 545) of Mozart, and the Symphony No. 39 of Haydn, as well as the Concierto de Aranjuez of Joaquin Rodrigo, written in 1939 (the soloist has not been named). At Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church on Feb. 18, the orchestra will perform two Arnold Schoenberg arrangements two Johann Strauss II waltzes: The Emperor Waltz, and Roses from the South. The major work on the program is Mahler’s Fourth Symphony (in G), in the chamber orchestra arrangement by Erwin Stein; the soloist for the finale also has not yet been named.
Two symphonies by Beethoven – Nos. 5 (in C minor, Op. 67) and 6 (in F, Op. 68, Pastoral) – are on the bill March 1 for a concert at Mar-a-Lago, and the orchestra returns to the historic Marjorie Merriweather Post estate on March 28 for a fundraising gala featuring pianist Lola Astanova, Brazilian tenor Thiago Arancam and conductor Jahja Ling. Two pieces by Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris ― are on the program along with John Harbison’s Foxtrot, and a selection of popular arias from operas such as Puccini’s Tosca and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci.
The season concludes April 9 at the Kravis Center with music inspired by Spain. Conductor Ramon Tebar has programmed the España of Emmanuel Chabrier, and Maurice Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso and Rhapsodie Espagnole. Also included is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capricco Espagnole and two works by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla: The Three-Cornered Hat and the Ritual Fire Dance, from the ballet El Amor Brujo.
For more information, call 561-655-2657 or visit www.palmbeachsymphony.org.