Name: Life, Love & Death
Start: 2026-02-08T14:30:00
Location: Northwestern University

Albert Cano Smit

Evanston Symphony Orchestra

A perfect, if dark, teaser for Valentine’s Day, Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde is the ultimate love story. The Prelude und Liebestod combines the opening and closing segments of the opera, and portrays love, and every possible emotion of it. Ludwig van Beethoven’s grandiose and heroic Piano Concerto No. 5, “The Emperor” was his final piano concerto. A perfect contrast with the passionate Tristan und Isolde. It will be performed by rising star pianist Albert Cano Smit. Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 epitomizes the German late Romantic era symphony with its highly integrated and sweepingly melodic themes.

Life, Love & Death

Northwestern University

Jeffrey Biegel returns to the ESO with a new piano concerto by Peter Boyer, Rhapsody in Red, White and Blue. Commissioned by the Rhapsody National Initiative, a consortium of orchestras, including the ESO, this will be the Illinois premiere. It is inspired by the anniversary of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Mr. Biegel and the ESO will perform both pieces. Rounding out this concert is Gershwin’s short piece called “Promenade, (Walking the Dog)” written for the movie Shall We Dance, Leonard Bernstein’s “Suite” from the film score for On the Waterfront, and Samuel-Coleridge Taylor’s Petite Suite de Concert. The program will be hosted by WFMT’s LaRob K. Rafael.

Rhapsody in Red, White and Blue

This concert program features three distinct evocations of love, laughter and passion. Manuel de Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat, written as ballet music for Serge Diaghilev, follows a lecherous magistrate on his always thwarted quest of the beautiful miller’s wife. Alexander Glazunov’s Violin Concerto in A-Minor combines instrumental virtuosity with deep feelings and lyrical expressions. The violin soloist, Nathan Amaral, received the Sphinx Organization’s 2024 Medal Of Excellence Award. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral tour-de-force Scheherazade, based on tales from The Thousand and One Nights, is one of the most popular works on the orchestral repertoire for a reason. This performance, featuring Concertmaster Julie Fischer, commemorates her 10th season in the chair.