Love & War
Pianist Awadagin Pratt joins Daniel Hope and New Century for this program of potent 20th century American works for strings that speak to our collective emotions. Coping with the senselessness of war is the heartbeat of the program’s first half, with composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson confronting his concerns about the Korean War through his work Grass. In contrast, composer David Diamond wrote his exuberant work Rounds to dispel the gloomy wartime mood of the 1940s in vivid fashion. The program closes with Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium), an epic work for solo violin, strings and percussion inspired by the ancient Greek debate over love in its many forms.
Daniel Hope
Music Director and Concertmaster
Awadagin Pratt
Piano
PROGRAM:
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson
Grass, Poem for Piano, Strings & Percussion
David Diamond
Rounds, for strings
INTERMISSION
Florence Price
Adoration for violin and strings
(arr. Paul Bateman)
Leonard Bernstein
Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)
Learn more at the New Century Chamber Orchestra website.