At A Glance
Dmitri Shostakovich is no stranger to concert audiences, but his film music—which he wrote throughout his career—is less know. The Great Citizen is a two-part film directed by Fridrikh Ermler about the Bolshevik revolutionary Sergei Kirov. The Funeral March theme comes from the Revolutionary lament “You Fell as Victims.”
William Walton’s Viola Concerto was written for the virtuoso Lionel Tertis, but it was the composer and violist Paul Hindemith who ended up premiering it. “It’s an extremely expressive piece,” says SF Symphony Principal Viola Jonathan Vinocour. “It uses a lot of clashing harmonies—very mild by today’s standards—but it gives a feeling of yearning.”
Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 3 developed from his opera The Fiery Angel, which culminates in a convent of demonically possessed nuns. Unable to have it staged, Prokofiev adapted some of its motifs into a boundary-pushing Symphony. Prokofiev later wrote that he considered this piece “to be one of my best compositions.”
