The Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin premiered the new Eurydice Suite by Matthew Aucoin at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts on February 3rd 2022, opening an all-American program that included Knoxville: Summer of 1915 by Samuel Barber, sung by soprano Angel Blue, and Symphony No. 1 by Florence Price. The suite was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and highlights some of the most compelling musical themes from Aucoin’s full opera Eurydice with similarly lush orchestration and intensity.
Peter Dobrin of The Philadelphia Inquirer writes:
Aucoin is a gifted storyteller…Consider this musical sequence: the sound of soaring freedom followed by a pulsing insistence. Repeated Brahms-like gestures. A grinding journey, like some kind of crucible. Then a big wind-down of energies. All that comes in the first five or so minutes.
The one-movement suite is marked in four sections, each with its own subtitle, though the musical arc works without knowing this. And though the score may have originated in the opera house, my mind kept going to a different frame of reference: the best kind of video game soundtrack, deliciously dark and bellicose. It was also convincingly other-worldly, a sure sign of orchestral forces etched and shaded by an imaginative hand.
The Philadelphia Orchestra brings the program to New York on Tuesday, February 8th, 2022 at Carnegie Hall.
Eurydice was commissioned by the Los Angeles Opera and the Metropolitan Opera with a libretto by renowned playwright Sarah Ruhl. It had its World Premiere in Los Angeles in early 2020 and subsequent East Coast Premiere at the Met in November 2021. Michael Andor Brodeur of The Washington Post writes of the New York production, “Eurydice is a beguiling tour of underworld and an arresting tour de force from a composer clearly hitting his stride…Aucoin matches the nimbleness of Ruhl’s text throughout… with rich, kinetic color.”
The Met’s November production will be featured on PBS this March; Great Performances at the Met: Eurydice premieres on March 6th with Renée Fleming as host. Please check your local listings and visit PBS.org for more information.
For more information, please contact your local Wise Music Promotion Team. See Contact Us.
