NMPhil launches new season with dinosaurs, young musicians and Mahler

The 15th season of the New Mexico Philharmonic begins with three concerts featuring world-renowned musicians, award-winning young soloists and marauding prehistoric creatures.

‘Jurassic Park in Concert’

Guest conductor Jason Altieri will kick things off on Saturday, Sept. 27, with a live performance of John Williams’ score for “Jurassic Park” while the film is projected behind the orchestra.

“Orchestras playing movie scores in front of the movie as it’s running has been all the rage lately,” Altieri said. “That’s been happening all over the place. And it really is, in my opinion, the best way to see a movie, especially a classic, like ‘Jurassic Park.’”

NMPhil did a similar performance of “The Princess Bride” last year, with Altieri conducting.

Altieri called the “Jurassic Park” score “epic,” noting that he has loved Williams’ film scores since childhood.

“I was born in ’71, and I saw ‘Star Wars’ in the theater as a little guy. Hearing that music just blew me away from the get-go,” Altieri said.

“Now that I’m a conductor, I’ve done my fair share of John Williams concerts, and from all sorts of different scores, from ‘Home Alone’ to ‘Catch Me if You Can’ to ‘Jurassic Park,’ and, of course, ‘Star Wars,’” Altieri said. “That guy really knows how to write for orchestra.”

The “Jurassic Park” score, in particular, features big, swelling passages for the brass section.

“That’s kind of what he’s known for, this really wonderful brass writing,” Altieri said. “I know it’s a challenge for the brass section, but it’s a lot of fun for them, as well.”

Altieri said hearing Williams’ film music as a child is partly what inspired him to later become a conductor.

“It probably helps that my parents were musicians, as well, so I grew up with symphonic music,” he said. “But to hear music on that scope and scale, it affected me in a physical way. I think that’s one of the reasons why I decided to become a conductor.”

Hearing a film score performed live along with the film but without the actors’ dialog, according to Altieri, helps audiences pick up on aspects of the music they might otherwise overlook.

“Oftentimes, people take the film score for granted, because you see the story rolling along,” Altieri said. “But really getting into the score itself, you hear all the tiny little details that help to bring out and reinforce the emotions of the actors on the screen.”

The “Jurassic Park” score includes some unusual percussion, including the vibraslap – an instrument mostly used in cartoons – and a jaw bone.

“The jaw bone is used for the raptors when they’re hunting,” Altieri said. “Now and then, you have to strike a jaw bone, which I think is to signify the fighting of the dinosaurs.”

Altieri said he loves working with NMPhil.

“It’s just a wonderful group of musicians, and every time they invite me back, it feels like coming home,” he said.

‘Schubert’s Tragic Symphony’

The first of NMPhil’s Afternoon Classics series this season will take place on Sunday, Oct. 5, with François López-Ferrer conducting Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 4 in C minor, also known as the composer’s “Tragic” symphony.

López-Ferrer, a renowned Spanish American conductor, is the recipient of the prestigious 2024 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award.

The afternoon concert will also feature selections from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4, performed by the 11-year-old violinist Ella Tasker, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, performed by 16-year-old pianist Sean Choi.

Tasker and Choi were the first-place winners of this year’s Jackie McGehee Young Artists’ Competition, sponsored by the Music Guild of New Mexico.

Teresa Martinez, the Music Guild’s co-vice president of membership, said the annual competition was named for one of the Guild’s charter members, Jackie McGehee, and it is open to all young New Mexican musicians between the ages of 10 and 21.

“It’s turned into a premier competition, where they bring in professionals from across the country to be jurors,” Martinez said.

Martinez saw both Tasker and Choi perform in this year’s competition and was “very impressed” with their talent.

“Ella was one of the younger competitors,” Martinez said. “Her mother is the first chair of the New Mexico Philharmonic, so she comes from a musical family.”

What impressed Martinez most about Tasker was her ability to connect emotionally with the music.

“She is so expressive when she’s playing,” Martinez said. “She is quite an artist at the tender age of 11. She’s very captivating.”

Martinez found Choi equally memorable.

“I remember his enthusiasm,” she said. “And he’s very, very talented.”

“Everyone was very impressed with the level of competition,” Martinez added.

In addition to sponsoring the Young Artists’ Competition, the Music Guild promotes music education and provides grants to music nonprofits.

“We’re here for the love of music,” Martinez said. “So, we want to support and promote and encourage all the nonprofit musical organizations that educate and enrich the quality of music across the state, especially for our youth.”

‘Mahler’s Fourth’

NMPhil’s music director, Roberto Minczuk, will conduct his first concert of the season on Saturday, Oct. 11, with three poignant works: Krysztof Penderecki’s “To the Victims of Hiroshima,” Richard Strauss’ “Four Last Songs” and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.

“It’s quite a special program,” Minczuk said. “It starts with a piece by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, who is one of the most important composers of the second part of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st century.”

Minczuk wanted to perform Penderecki’s “To the Victims of Hiroshima” on the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

“It was never performed in New Mexico,” Minczuk said. “So, in this year that we remember 80 years since the bombing, I thought it was very appropriate to have this performed in New Mexico where it all started, so to speak, with Los Alamos and the importance of New Mexico in this development that changed the world.”

“It’s very important for us to reflect on the subject through music,” Minczuk added. “This is what music does. Coming to a live concert provides a space for reflection, a space to connect with that which is very human — the emotions and the history.”

The second piece in the program, Richard Strauss’ “Four Last Songs,” reflects on war and destruction, as well.

“These are Strauss’ last works, which he wrote just a year before he died in 1949,” Minczuk said. “He’s German, and he died in Germany, having seen the complete destruction of his country. So, he was reflecting upon his whole life. And these ‘Four Last Songs’ are considered his most beautiful work.”

In this work, Strauss revisits the musical theme from “Death and Transfiguration,” a tone poem he had written 60 years earlier.

“He quotes the theme from ‘Death and Transfiguration,’ because he was feeling death knocking at his door,” Minczuk said. “It’s really a sublime work for soprano and orchestra.”

The soprano, Meghan Kasanders, will be making her New Mexico debut. Opera News called her “a wonderfully promising, rich dramatic soprano.”

“Meghan Kasanders is one of the up and coming stars of her generation,” Minczuk said. “She’s singing with major opera houses and major orchestras around the world, and we’re happy to have her come to Albuquerque for this magnificent performance.”

To cap off the evening, NMPhil will perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.

“We just closed our last season with Mahler’s Third Symphony in April, so now we’re continuing the cycle,” Minczuk said. “This is really a phenomenal opportunity for our audience to experience his symphonies played chronologically.”

But Minczuk said Mahler’s Fourth is “very different” from the others.

“It’s a more delicate symphony. The orchestration is not as large,” he said. “It’s as if you’re dealing with very fragile elements, and very beautiful ones, like walking in a crystal shop.”

The symphony ends with a solo by Kasanders.

“It ends very softly,” Minczuk said. “Mahler uses a text for the last movement, which talks about the hope of the afterlife, when life’s troubles have ended.”

Reflecting on the concert program, Minczuk said he hopes it will help audiences “cope with … our anxiety about our time and what lies ahead of us.”

Penderecki and Strauss were both writing music in the aftermath of World War II, while Mahler was looking for hope even in the face of death.

“Now that we see conflicts around the world that could trigger another world war, it makes us think how history could repeat itself,” Minczuk said. “But at the same time, Mahler’s symphony ends on that note of hope.”

“It’s powerful and beautiful music that will inspire, and also bring us some consolation,” Minczuk said.

NMPhil launches new season with dinosaurs, young musicians and Mahler