What a spectacular program to open @cincysymphony’s 2026-27 season under music director Cristian Mǎcelaru – a musical meeting of the finest jazz orchestra in the world, Jazz at Lincoln Center and its longtime director Wynton Marsalis, with one of the most exciting new orchestral works of the 21st century.
Superstar violinist Nicola Benedetti opened the program with a fine performance of Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto. Among the best known of the German Romantic concerto warhorses, Benedetti gave the work a pulsating, yet equally effervescent vitality, particularly in the first and last movements. Her encore served as a sweet love letter to her native Scotland, an arrangement of the original version of the melody most often associated with Robert Burns’ Auld Lang Syne.
Marsalis’ Liberty Symphony, which received its Cincinnati premiere in this evening’s concert, was commissioned as part of the America 250 celebrations. Many of its most powerful moments showed off the wide variety of styles which has influenced much of Marsalis’ symphonic writing, including Afro-Latin, jazz, blues and laments of New Orleans dirges common for funeral procession. In the fifth movement, bass-baritone Kevin Short brought a wonderfully spirited basso voice to the singing of three simple words: America my Home, set against slow, lyrical orchestral writing with flashes of Charles Ives.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra was an absolute delight to hear live, with spectacularly biting trumpets, swooping saxophones and clarinets and driving piano, particularly in the second, fourth and sixth movements.
Eagerly looking forward to tomorrow’s new program with Marsalis’ Violin Concerto and a unique adaptation of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
Bravo bravo bravo bravo!
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