Christoph Eschenbach Conductor
Joshua Bell Violin
Chausson Poème, for violin and orchestra
Vieuxtemps Violin Concerto No. 5
Brahms Symphony No. 1
One of the most celebrated violinists of his era, Joshua Bell made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut at 14. His Carnegie Hall debut followed at age 17, launching a career that has embraced dozens of recordings, a shelf full of awards including a GRAMMY®, and performances that have taken him from the White House to Hollywood, where he collaborated on film scores including The Red Violin and Angels & Demons.
In this program, Bell performs two of the most heartbreakingly romantic works in the repertoire. Ernest Chausson’s Poème, based on a Turgenev short story of two men who love the same woman, her choice, and the aftermath, is a story of repressed passion whose depths can only be communicated through the playing of the rejected lover’s violin. Bell follows this classic with another romantic piece, Henri Vieuxtemps’s Fifth Violin Concerto tugs at the heartstrings from the first entry of the violin soloist and from there takes the listener on thrill ride of emotion. It takes the player on a thrill ride as well; originally composed as a contest piece, it covers the entire range of the fingerboard and summons every skill of the virtuoso. Heady stuff, and the perfect showcase for a violinist whose tone has been described as “flowing like liquid silver” (Bachtrack).
This feast of Romantic music closes with Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony, which took him 14 years to compose—writing, tearing it up, and writing again. Filled with lovely melodies, evocative soundscapes, and the “autumnal mood” that would color many of Brahms’s works, the Symphony is lush, dramatic, and romantic in every sense of the word.