Among the many orchestras and ensembles celebrating the 100th anniversary of the world premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring are several performing the piece on May 29, exactly 100 years to the day since the Paris premiere in 1913. The Virginia Symphony and Music Director JoAnn Falletta will perform the Rite with dancers from the Richmond Ballet, choreographed by Salvatore Aiello, at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk. The performance is part of the Virginia Arts Festival, which runs from March to June and includes dance, jazz, opera, and pop-music performances at multiple venues in the Norfolk/Hampton Roads region. New York radio station WQXR will broadcast 24 hours of recordings of The Rite of Spring, as well as a live one-piano performance of the work at 7 p.m., performed by Vicky Chow at the Greene Space in lower Manhattan. Throughout the broadcast day, musicians and composers will speak on air about the piece, including Dan Deacon, Zoe Keating, Owen Pallett, Claire Chase, Steve Reich, David Lang, Robert Spano, Alan Pierson, and George Steel. The piano duo of Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe are releasing the first segment of their new Rite of Spring video on YouTube on May 29. The video blends music from Rite and images including insects, dancers, the ocean, and the California desert. Anderson and Roe’s recent Erlkönig video was nominated for an Emmy award this April. Musicians in the Florida Orchestra are featured in a video created by the orchestra, in which they talk about what the Stravinsky work means to them. The TFO performed The Rite of Spring on May 24 and 25, led by Tito Muñoz. Symphony magazine’s feature story on The Rite Spring was published in Spring 2013.
Posted May 28, 2013
