Adam Golka. Photo by Jürgen Frank
By Natasha Anderson
On Saturday, October 22, the Asheville Symphony (ASO) presents Masterworks 2: Scheherazade, an evening of vibrant musical illustrations with guest pianist Adam Golka. The concert takes place at 8 p.m. at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium under the baton of ASO music director Darko Butorac.
“The inspiration for this program was looking for pieces that have a tie with the cultures of the ancient trading routes that connected the East and the West, such as the Silk Road,” says Butorac.
The concert opens with Borodin’s symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia, which he composed in 1880 and dedicated to Franz Liszt. Next, Golka joins the Symphony for Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, which de Falla described as “symphonic impressions.” The atmospheric work includes musical depictions of famous locations in Spain, including the Palace garden of the Generalife on the Alhambra hill in Granada, and the gardens of the Sierra Cordoba mountains.
Fazil Say’s Piano Concerto No. 2 Silk Road is third on the program. Composed in 1994, the concerto follows the route of the old Silk Road from Tibet to Turkey and was influenced by Say’s studies of ancient Eastern folk music in the archives of the Berlin Museum of Ethnology. Golka also performs this piece.
“Adam Golka made such a beautiful impression on our audiences during our 2021 digital concerts that I suggested the idea of collaborating on the Say and de Falla pairing, and he was absolutely thrilled,” says Butorac. “He is a virtuoso who imprints his personality on every work, and I cannot wait to collaborate with him.”
The evening concludes with Rimsky-Korsakov’s enchanting Scheherazade. Composed and premiered in 1888, the piece is based on One Thousand and One Nights (commonly called Arabian Nights). It comprises four movements, which paint a vibrant musical picture of the characters and incidents in the inspirational text, with the narrator, Scheherazade, represented in virtuosic passages for solo violin.
Thomas Wolfe Auditorium is at 87 Haywood Street, in Asheville. Single tickets for Masterworks concerts are $25–75, depending on seating section (reduced youth pricing is available). Series subscriptions are also available. Tickets can be purchased online at AshevilleSymphony.org, by phone at 828.254.7046, in person at the Asheville Symphony office at 27 College Place, Suite 100, or at the Harrah’s Cherokee Center Asheville Box Office in downtown Asheville.
