Tucson orchestra celebrates season finale

It closes it this weekend on a louder note with "Echoes of Celebration."

"The idea was really to create all kinds of emotions and memories," SASO Music Director Linus Lerner said. "So we end the season with 'Celebration.' I think there is nothing better than to end the season with how we celebrate."

The orchestra will perform the concert in SaddleBrooke on Saturday, April 11, and in northwest Tucson on Sunday, April 12.

The concert opens with Beethoven's triumphant "Consecration of the House" Overture, a work influenced by Bach and Handel that Lerner described as "a very celebratory piece," and closes with Reena Esmail's choral work "I Rise: Women in Song," featuring the Tucson Girls Chorus.

The works bookend Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos, featuring guest pianists Marco Schiavo and Sergio Marchegiani from Italy.

"This is the first time that SASO performs with two pianos," Lerner said. "We have to rent another piano to do this with the two soloists."

Lerner, who has a robust international career including leading two orchestras in his native Brazil, worked with Schiavo and Marchegiani in Italy. The pair have been performing as Duo Schiavo Marchegiani since 2006.

"They're very respected in Italy," Lerner said. "They're very nice and very serious people. I like them a lot."

The concerto is a rare foray for SASO, which has not performed a lot of Poulenc over the years.

"Poulenc liked to write about fanfares and circus kind of stuff," Lerner explained of the 20th-century French composer's whimsical style. 

The Concerto for Two Pianos was inspired by Poulenc's exposure to a Balinese gamelan ensemble at the 1931 Paris Expo. Lerner said that Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos was also in Paris at that time, which could have exposed Poulenc to South American music.

"So there was when the world was opening to exotic music, exotic rhythms and harmonies so that's something really interesting," Lerner said.

Closing the season with Esmail's song cycle continues SASO's season-long focus on women. Lerner brought in a number of female guest artists, including oboist Erin Hannigan, classical guitarist Barbora Kubíková, violinist Holly Mulcahy and soprano Ira Bertman.

"And now we will do Reena Esmail's piece about the power of women," Lerner said of the five-movement work that draws texts from Emily Dickinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou and Arlene Geller, according to the composer's notes. 

This is SASO's second collaboration with the Girls Chorus since 2009's "Carmina Burana" performance. Next season, SASO plans to have its own choir. The effort has been in the works for months, and Lerner said he expects to introduce the choir next fall. 

SASO will perform "Echoes of Celebration" at 7 p.m. Saturday at DesertView Performing Arts Center, 39900 S. Clubhouse Drive in SaddleBrooke, and at 3 p.m. Sunday at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, SW Sanctuary, 7575 N. Paseo del Norte. SaddleBrooke tickets are $35 through dvpac.net; it's $28 for the Tucson concert through sasomusic.org.