Joshua Bell with Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Featuring James Conlon, Conductor

Tonight’s program opens with Samuel Barber’s first composition for full orchestra, composed during his student days at The Curtis Institute, and features the dazzling virtuoso Joshua Bell in the same composer’s Violin Concerto, in which the soloist revels in the suave melodic lines that made Barber such a consummate composer for the human voice. Shostakovich, whose Seventh and Eighth symphonies depicted the horrors of World War II, made his Ninth Symphony a joyous and exuberant celebration of the end of that conflict, a lighthearted romp that took his colleagues by surprise. The evening ends with Ravel’s apotheosis of Hungarian gypsy music; inspired by Paganini’s famous Caprices, Ravel’s work has been declared even “more devilish” in its blazing bravura, an appropriate vehicle for Bell.

Program:

Barber: The School for Scandal Overture, Op. 5
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 70
Barber: Violin Concerto, Op. 14
Ravel: Tzigane, Concert Rhapsody

Tickets: $90-$50/Lawn $10

Park opens at 5 p.m.