Mount Vernon Virtuosi continues its season with a program celebrating the warmth, lyricism, and brilliance of Italian music, pairing two works written a century apart but united by the same generous, singing spirit.
Nino Rota—best known to film audiences for his scores to The Godfather and La Strada—turned his melodic gift to the concert hall in his Concerto per Archi, a four-movement work of neoclassical clarity and wit. From its songful opening to its dazzling finale, the piece reveals a composer as comfortable with Bach and Vivaldi as with Fellini.
The program culminates in one of the great masterpieces for string orchestra: Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence, written in the afterglow of an Italian sojourn and later reimagined for strings. Composed nearly a century before Rota's concerto, it channels the same Italianate sunlight through a Russian sensibility—lush harmonies and soaring melodies building to an exuberant close. Together, the two works trace a lineage of composers falling under Italy's spell, each answering that warmth in his own musical language.
A program for anyone who loves the string orchestra at its fullest and most radiant.
Amit Peled, direction