WRTI announces an all-new series of live shows from The Philadelphia Orchestra, recorded live from Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center, with a refreshed format and new people behind the scenes. Melinda whiting is the host, and Susan lewis is a producer and lead interviewer. The program can be streamed every Sunday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 and every Monday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on WRTI HD-2.

The new series features concerts from the 2021/2022 season of the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as performances of chamber music and other works featuring musicians from the Orchestra.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin perform the WRTI’s inaugural broadcast on January 9 and 10, in a uniquely-format program, featuring the highlights of the Orchestra’s historic reunion with a live audience in the concert hall in the fall of 2021. After 18 months of silence, the orchestral performances resumed with works including Beethoven’s Symphony No.5, the Bowléro, and new works by Valerie Coleman and Iman Habibi.

This show also features chamber music recordings from pop-up concerts around Philadelphia performed by Orchestra musicians in 2021 as part of the “Our City, Your Orchestra” initiative.

At the start of the closing, the Orchestra commissioned Valerie Coleman to write Seven o’clock cry, which evokes the spontaneous tributes offered to frontline staff as COVID-19 took hold. The orchestra has performed the work on several occasions, first on its digital stage, then in front of a live audience at Mann Center and Verizon Hall, and at its concert in New York, which marked the opening of the season and the long-awaited return of music to Carnegie Hall.

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony will also be heard, while the Orchestra takes up a seasonal theme cut short by the end of the pandemic in March 2020. For its 2019/2020 season, the Orchestra had commissioned several young composers to create works responding to Beethoven’s symphonies. . One of them was scheduled for the second week of March 2020: Jeder Baum spricht, Where Every tree speaks, by Canadian composer of Iranian origin Iman Habibi. In October 2021, the orchestra performed the work in person for the first time, just before Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

This festive program ends with the Bowléro, as it was performed with exuberance at the October Opening Night Gala.

Listen to the interviews interspersed throughout the show. Producer Susan Lewis chats with Yannick, composer Iman Habibi, and orchestral musicians Daniel Matsukawa and Jennifer Montone about the enduring power of music and the creative ways musical performance has remained vibrant during the COVID-19 shutdown .

Concert broadcasts of the 2021/2022 season of the Philadelphia Orchestra begins January 16 and 17.

SCHEDULE for broadcasts on January 9 and 10:

Coleman: Seven o’clock cry

Mouret: Suite of Symphonies (arr. Matsukawa): I. Rondeau

Bizet (arr. Kelly and Matsukawa): Habanera by Carmen

Beethoven: Septet in E flat major: I. Adagio-Allegro; IV. Themes with variants

Habibi: Jeder Baum sprit (“Every tree speaks”)

Beethoven: Symphony No.5 in C minor, Op. 67

Fraying: Bowléro

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, driver

Listen to the Philadelphia Orchestra live shows every Sunday at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 and stream on WRTI.org, the WRTI mobile app, and your favorite smart speaker. Listen again Mondays at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2. Listen for up to two weeks after airing on WRTI proofreading.