At A Glance
Gloria Isabel Ramos Triano is a Venezuelan-born composer and conductor who is now based in Europe. She wrote amazon for the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck, who premiered it in 2021. The music evokes the Amazons of Greek mythology, a group of skilled female warriors, in tribute to real-life modern women who fight and struggle in unjust wars today.
Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is based on Niccolò Paganini’s 24th Caprice for solo violin. Rachmaninoff reworks it into a piano concerto in all but name, encompassing an introduction, the theme itself, and 24 variations. He also comingles the Dies irae from the Latin Requiem mass, and, in the 18th variation, discovers one of the world’s most beautiful melodies by inverting and slowing the original theme.
Franz Schubert’s Great C-major Symphony was never performed publicly during the composer’s life, and was finally premiered a decade later with the support of Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. Its extended scope prompted Schumann’s description of its “heavenly length,” and its grand Romanticism signaled the next evolution in the Viennese symphonic tradition after Ludwig van Beethoven.
Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is based on Niccolò Paganini’s 24th Caprice for solo violin. Rachmaninoff reworks it into a piano concerto in all but name, encompassing an introduction, the theme itself, and 24 variations. He also comingles the Dies irae from the Latin Requiem mass, and, in the 18th variation, discovers one of the world’s most beautiful melodies by inverting and slowing the original theme.
Franz Schubert’s Great C-major Symphony was never performed publicly during the composer’s life, and was finally premiered a decade later with the support of Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. Its extended scope prompted Schumann’s description of its “heavenly length,” and its grand Romanticism signaled the next evolution in the Viennese symphonic tradition after Ludwig van Beethoven.
