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R A V I N I A F A M I L Y F U N G U I D E
ORCHESTRA CONCERTS
8:00 p.m. Thursday, July 12
Pavilion
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Marin Alsop,
conductor
Joshua Bell,
violin
Leonard Bernstein:
Overture to
Candide
Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky:
Symphony No. 6 (“Pathétique”)
You might have heard that Ravinia
is celebrating the 100th birthday of
Leonard Bernstein this year. Even
though he’s not going to be here to
blow out candles on a giant birthday
cake—he’d have to take a pretty big
breath!—he can still make it feel like
a joyous day because he wrote so
much exciting music. The first piece of
music of his that you’ll hear this year
is the Overture to his theater piece
Candide
—that’s the music that gets
played before the curtain goes up and
the story starts. Usually little parts of
music you’ll hear later in the show
get put into an overture, and one of
the melodies that makes the
Candide
overture popular is from the song
“The Best of All Possible Worlds.” How
could you not love a song with that as
the title? See if you can pick out that
melody; the words should fit right in!
Like
Candide
, Bernstein’s
Serenade
was written to put a piece of classic
literature to music. Bernstein read
a lot of books, and that gave him a
big imagination—and he needed it
to take something written hundreds
of years before he was born and
make music from it! Fortunately,
the “Symposium” that inspired the
Serenade
was about a group of people
talking about love and all the good
things it makes us feel. It’s a great
subject for music because it’s some-
thing everybody feels, and music like
Bernstein’s can help you think of that
feeling, even without words.
(Want to know a fun fact about
this concert? These are the same three
pieces that Bernstein conducted for his
last concert at Ravinia 32 years ago!)
7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 14
Pavilion
Chicago Symphony Orchestra and
Chicago Symphony Chorus
Marin Alsop,
conductor
Wyatt Parr,
boy soprano
Tamara Wilson,
soprano
Michelle DeYoung,
mezzo-soprano
Paul Appleby,
tenor
Ryan Speedo Green,
bass-baritone
Leonard Bernstein:
Chichester Psalms
Ludwig van Beethoven:
Symphony No. 9
Leonard Bernstein knew so much
about the power of music to make