Acclaimed by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune "as a performer of scintillating energy and imagination…with a fearless, fiery quality," Aspen alumna Joyce Yang returns for Brahms's mammoth and emotionally intense First Piano Concerto. This highly personal work begins with what at least two of Brahms' friends confirmed was his immediate musical response to Robert Schumann's suicide attempt. In the slow movement, he paints a "tender portrait" of Schumann's wife Clara — with whom he was infatuated. After these two profound movements, Brahms was unsure how to bring the work to a satisfying conclusion. Always aware of Beethoven's shadow, he turned to the late composer's 3rd Piano Concerto as a model, and added his own ideas.

Thomas Adès Dante ballet score was a tribute to Franz Liszt, himself no stranger to demonic music. The LA Times described it as "a sizzling, cracking whip of a piece," and at the first concert performance in London, the audience broke out into spontaneous applause with over half the ballet still to come. Inferno is the longest and most extroverted of the three movements (the others being Purgatory and Paradise). Get ready for clever and sometimes gnarly orchestral colors as thirteen movements depict Hell's realms of sin, along with movements for Charon, Ferryman of the underworld, and Francesca da Rimini with her lover Paolo (13th-century Italian lovers who provided the basis for Tchaikovsky's famous tone poem).

Opening the program are two orchestral excerpts from Wagner's last opera, Parsifal. Wagner wrote that "the prelude contains all that's needed and it all unfolds like a flower from its bud." The expansive melodic phrases, shimmering orchestral textures, and frequent silences create a reverential and meditative atmosphere which prepares the listener for the mystical drama to come. In the opera's third act, the knight Parsifal, exhausted after years of travel, rests in a sunlit meadow filled with flowers. When he remarks on the transcendent beauty that surrounds him, a fellow knight tells his that this is "Good Friday's Magic Spell," when the world is reborn in love and innocence.

Welcome the Aspen Festival Orchestra at their inaugural concert as they take you on a musical ride from the satanic to the sublime!

Please note these are working rehearsals and pieces may not be played fully, piece order may change, and soloists may not sing or play as fully as in performance. Also note the conductor is not mic'ed to allow the musicians to work together more freely.