After an unusually tumultuous season, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra brings its 2015-16 concert season to a close this weekend. Their program is full of crowd-pleasers without even a vaguely unfamiliar piece to meet our ears, but for a few hours it can take our mind off the labor strife.
It begins with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, a stand-alone piece that the composer wrote to take his mind off his frustrations stemming from an opera that he never wound up finishing. The ecstatic love theme from the piece’s third section has been used in many movies, TV shows, and video games. Aaron Copland’s Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo is an arrangement for orchestra that rings only small changes to his ballet score, and it has found even more success in this form than the original ballet. Gershwin’s An American in Paris was inspired by the composer’s visits to the French capital, a jazzy tone poem that uses the brass instruments to mimic the car horns on Paris’ streets in the 1920s. The centerpiece of the evening figures to be Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, a dazzling showpiece that will be performed by Midori.
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra plays Fri-Sun at Bass Performance Hall, 555 Commerce St, FW. Tickets are $20-82. Call 817-665-6000.
