The Peterborough Symphony Orchestra (PSO) returns to Showplace Performance Centre in downtown Peterborough on Saturday (April 2) for the second in-person concert of its 2021-2022 season.
The orchestra will be welcoming the arrival of spring with “As the Sun Rises”, featuring a musical program of renewal, hope, and growth.
Michael Newnham will conduct the PSO as it performs German composer Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, Canadian composer Elizabeth Raum’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and American composer Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring.
Wagner composed the Siegfried Idyll, a symphonic poem for chamber orchestra, as a personal birthday present for his second wife Cosima after the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869.
On the morning they were to celebrate her birthday, a small group of musicians directed by Wagner played the new composition to awaken her. Struggling under debt, Wagner later sold the piece re-scored for a larger orchestra.
Raum composed Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in 1989 on commission to the Regina Symphony Chamber Players. Later re-scored for a full orchestra, the five-movement suite is based on the epic 14th-century poem of the same name that tells the story of one of King Arthur’s famous Knights of the Round Table.
VIDEO: “Siegfried Idyll” performed by BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Michael Newnham conducted Orchestra Toronto in a performance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in February 2020.
After being commissioned in 1942 to write a ballet “with an American theme,” Copland’s Appalachian Spring was first performed in 1944 and won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Music. In 1945, he was commissioned to rearrange the ballet as an orchestral suite, preserving most of the music, which is the version now performed by most orchestras.
Single tickets are still available for the concert, which has performances at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets for either performance are $45 ($10 for students) and can be purchased online at tickets.showplace.org.
Each performance, which includes a Maestro Chat, will last around one hour with no intermission.
“Mindful of the vulnerable amongst our patrons, the PSO will also be requiring audience members to wear masks during the approximately one hour concert,” says PSO general manager Lee Bolton. “We appreciate the ongoing patience and kindness of the Peterborough community.”
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra’s 2022 season.
