SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

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SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

The Florida Orchestra

48 episodes

1 week ago

This Masterworks program celebrates Baroque and beyond with music by Handel, Haydn and Mozart. Handel’s Water Music — commissioned for King George’s 1717 Thames celebration — sparkles with regal pomp, innovative use of horns and vibrant dance movements. Mozart takes audiences on an irrepressible romp in the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, which perfectly captures the opera’s comic energy. It's a different feel from his elegant Ballet Music from Idomeneo, a French-style suite that closes a...

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Performing Arts

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This Masterworks program celebrates Baroque and beyond with music by Handel, Haydn and Mozart. Handel’s Water Music — commissioned for King George’s 1717 Thames celebration — sparkles with regal pomp, innovative use of horns and vibrant dance movements. Mozart takes audiences on an irrepressible romp in the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, which perfectly captures the opera’s comic energy. It's a different feel from his elegant Ballet Music from Idomeneo, a French-style suite that closes a...

Show more...

Performing Arts

Episodes (20/48)

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Mozart & Handel

This Masterworks program celebrates Baroque and beyond with music by Handel, Haydn and Mozart. Handel’s Water Music — commissioned for King George’s 1717 Thames celebration — sparkles with regal pomp, innovative use of horns and vibrant dance movements. Mozart takes audiences on an irrepressible romp in the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, which perfectly captures the opera’s comic energy. It's a different feel from his elegant Ballet Music from Idomeneo, a French-style suite that closes a...

1 week ago

8 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Beethoven & Bernstein

Experience two monumental works that bridge centuries. Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, a dazzling precursor to his Ode to Joy, blends virtuosic piano, orchestra and chorus in a joyful, triumphant finale that echoes through his Ninth Symphony. Written for a legendary concert and featuring Beethoven himself at the piano, this piece captures the raw energy of genius in motion. In contrast, Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3 “Kaddish” confronts God in a deeply personal and political reckoning. With s...

1 month ago

9 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto

Experience the emotional sweep of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, a fiery showcase of virtuosity and lyricism once panned by critics but now cherished as one of the greatest violin concertos ever written. From its bold opening to the folk-inspired finale, this 34-minute masterpiece brims with Russian flair and heart-racing brilliance. Then, dive into the sonic whirlwind of John Adams’ Harmonielehre, a modern American classic that fuses Minimalist drive with lush Romanticism. Inspired by vivid ...

1 month ago

7 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony

Explore three lush, evocative works that celebrate nature and the power of storytelling through music. Start with a day-long mountain hike in Richard Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony, a grand tone poem with a massive orchestra — including wind machine and thunder sheet — to portray everything from sunrise to a thunderstorm. Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending offers a serene contrast: a pastoral 13-minute piece where the solo violin soars like a lark in flight, reflecting a deep love of the Engli...

2 months ago

11 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Pictures at an Exhibition

Art comes to life. The great orchestra showpiece Pictures at an Exhibition started out as an extended piano suite in 10 movements by Mussorgsky. That is until a half-century later, when Maurice Ravel had the good sense to see its true potential for a full orchestra. His orchestration has been a showstopper ever since. With a heady, cinematic feel, Korngold’s Violin Concerto pulls from his career as a staff composer for Warner Brothers, where he wrote music for 22 films and won two Oscars. Rou...

6 months ago

10 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Vivaldi's The Four Seasons

Is it possible to find someone who cannot hum a bit of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons -- arguably one of the most enduring works of all time? Vivaldi presents a musical travelogueof spring, summer, autumn and winter, complete with bird songs, shimmering creeks, a thunderstorm, peasant’s dance and a freezing ice storm. It’s exuberant and captivating every time. Another masterpiece on the program is Mozart’s Symphony No. 39, one of three symphonies that he completed in just six weeks in the summer ...

7 months ago

9 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet

This program spotlights an unusual instrument for a classical program: the saxophone. For Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, the tenor saxophone makes a rare appearance in a symphony orchestra with the theme representing Juliet. Of Prokofiev’s nine ballet scores, this is his finest – even though he originally wrote a happy ending to Shakespeare’s tragedy. An “altered” version was performed, however. The saxophone is front and center for A Kind of Trane Saxophone Concerto, written as an homage to t...

7 months ago

9 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto

Beethoven composed his Violin Concerto in 1806, when he was deaf. From the onset, the music unfolds with a sense of spaciousness, its character more graceful than frenetic. This work is not about power and bravura but poise and spirituality. At nearly 45 minutes, it also requires a lot of stamina for the soloist. Also on the program are Šárka and Die Moldau from Smetana’s Ma Vlast, a set of six tone poems depicting life and nature in Bohemia. Die Moldau is Smetana’s most-performed work, as it...

8 months ago

10 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1

For some listeners, Tchaikovsky’s evergreen Piano Concerto No. 1 is overplayed and overwrought. For others, it never fails to thrill with its embraceable tunes and striking rhythmic flourish. No, Tchaikovsky wasn’t subtle, and this piece is supercharged with pulsating sentiment. Meanwhile, the music of English composer William Walton is seldom heard in American concert halls, so a performance of his Belshazzar’s Feast is a treat. This brilliant cantata for orchestra, chorus and baritone soloi...

8 months ago

7 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Debussy's La Mer

A concert immersed in the sea. It opens with Garth Neustadter’s Seaborne, a film with stunning images of the sea set to music, performed by the Percussion Collective. The work explores water from the air, surface and underwater vantage points. Then the concert flows to Sibelius’ The Oceanides, which has been described as “the finest evocation of the sea that has ever been produced in music.” In Debussy’s La Mer, he pays tribute to the sea in a lavish three-movement masterpiece that doesn’t de...

9 months ago

9 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations

Variations on a Rococo Theme is the closest Tchaikovsky ever came to writing a cello concerto. Scored for a reduced orchestra, the Variations assume a chamber-like texture and balance the sweetness of the classical style with a romantic warmth, the soloist never leaving the spotlight − much less having a moment to rest. The program opens with the tone poem Elegia Andina by Gabriele Lena Frank. She was born hearing impaired, yet the Washington Post recently named her one of the 35 most signifi...

10 months ago

10 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto

Felix Mendelssohn’s best-loved work has to be his radiant Violin Concerto. It is loaded with good tunes. In particular is the finale, a puckish movement full of sparkle and bravado. One of the most significant African-American composers of the 20th century, William Dawson seamlessly wove folksong into works such as the Negro Folk Symphony. Quotes from American spirituals simmer throughout the work, which ends in an explosion of rhythms inspired by the composer’s trip to Africa. Composer Georg...

11 months ago

11 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Brahms' Symphony No. 2

Brahms’ idyllic Symphony No. 2 radiates warmth – until an explosion of brass announces one of the most exciting endings in music. In Grieg’s impassioned Piano Concerto, the opening rumble of timpani sends the piano on a flourish of unforgettable melodies. This fragrant and impassioned work is among the most performed – and recorded – of any music in the repertoire. Rounding out the program is Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s fresh and energetic Ballade for Orchestra, composed when was just 23. Thes...

1 year ago

9 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Beethoven's Symphony No. 5

The concert pairs two of the most famous openings in music: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra (Theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey). In Beethoven’s Fifth, it’s up to you, the listener, to interpret those four iconic bursts of sound – da da da dum! Fate knocking at the door? Victory over tyranny? A deaf composer shaking his fist at his lot in life? In Zarathustra, you’ll get a true feel for Strauss’ flair for dramatic beginnings in his “Mountain Sunrise.” Th...

1 year ago

8 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3

Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3 may be his most intriguing – and underrated – symphony. Four decades separate Rachmaninoff’s First and Third symphonies, both neglected compared to the celebrated Second. Written in America, his Third Symphony radiates lush romantic melodies, drenched in his trademark orchestral colors. The program starts off with Sibelius’ Violin Concerto, an unquestioned masterpiece revered by concert violinists for more than a century. It got off to a slow start in popularity,...

1 year ago

8 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Ravel's Bolero

Ravel’s Bolero begins quietly and ends demonically. The repetition – a maddening rat-a-tat-tat of the snare drum – may sound simple, but the gradual crescendo builds into a frenzy of intensity and brilliant color. Ravel himself underestimated the appeal of the piece, calling it “orchestration without music.” Instead of sliding into oblivion, Bolero enjoys unflagging popularity still today. Also on the program: De Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain is full of mystery, perfumed by the Alham...

1 year ago

12 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony

Mahler knew how to think big. For his Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” he stuffed the stage with 270 musicians, including 10 trumpets and 10 horns in the original score. It took Mahler five years to complete the symphony, which stretches more than 80 minutes and holds a special place among musicians and audiences. Today, millions of people have heard the Resurrection for the first time not in the concert hall, but in the movie Maestro, the 2023 biopic on Leonard Bernstein, as portrayed by Brad...

1 year ago

6 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Elgar’s Enigma Variations

The power of friendship. Edward Elgar’s most popular work, Enigma Variations, was dedicated to 14 friends portrayed in the pieces – from his wife to an Oxford professor, a bulldog and even Elgar himself. Like the Elgar, each section of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin (The Grave of Couperin) is dedicated to someone the composer knew, but this time they are friends who died on the battlefield. The music is far from gloomy. The composer once said, “the dead are sad enough, in their eternal silenc...

1 year ago

8 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Secret Lives: Listening to Sunsets

All in the family. From a tiny apartment around the world to a chance audition at The Florida Orchestra, family has been a driving force for Principal Cellist Yoni Draiblate. Is he bringing up the next Yo-Yo Ma? Time will tell. Even Brahms’ Double Concerto, which Yoni performs this weekend, cannot escape family drama.

1 year ago

23 minutes

SoundWaves with The Florida Orchestra

Program Notes: Saint-Saens’ Organ Symphony

We’re taking a tour of France in the spring. Magnifique! Saint-Saens’ Organ Symphony – used so effectively in the 1995 movie Babe – is a lush masterpiece that builds and builds until … wait for it … the organ is let loose in the finale. Fauré’s Requiem creates a place of peace and serenity with rich, soulful melodies, featuring The Master Chorale of Tampa Bay. The vibrant energy of Lili Boulanger’s Of a Spring Morning begins the concert. These program notes include music excerpts. Masterwork...

1 year ago

7 minutes