Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra's Valentine concert has French connections

Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra’s upcoming concert could have been titled “The French Connection,” for the Gallic links among the featured composers, but because it will be performed near Valentine’s Day, it’s called “In the Key of Love.”

The concert is set for 7:30 p.m. Feb. 12 at The Palace Theatre in Greensburg.

“Since the concert is essentially on Valentine’s weekend, I do try to choose music that will have an immediate appeal and will fit the romance theme,” said WSO artistic director Daniel Meyer, who will conduct. “The through-line is the French connection.”

Featured composers include Frenchmen Joseph Maurice Ravel and Paul Dukas, along with the Belgian-born Cesar Franck.

“Even though Franck was officially a Belgian, he spent his adult life in Paris making his name and his career,” Meyer said.

Special guest will be pianist Michael Brown, hailed by The New York Times as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers.”

“He’s a fabulous young American pianist who is as deft at the keyboard as he is as a musical mind,” Meyer said. “He is a wonderful composer, in addition to being a concert pianist. He’s written his own piano concerto and his own chamber music.”

Brown will be featured on Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, which Meyer describes as “sensuous and jazz-tinged.”

“He’s just so fun to talk to because he has such a wonderful knowledge of the repertoire and the art of getting inside the music from a composer’s standpoint,” Meyer said. “I think he’ll bring a wonderful balance of heart and head to that particular concerto.”

Composed around 1930, the concerto “was orchestrated to not overpower the solo piano, while prominently featuring percussion accents and complex rhythms,” said WSO executive director Endy Reindl in his program notes. “The piece evolves from several musical styles including jazz, which was king during the composition period, yet it still maintains 20th-century classical hallmarks including more complex musical chords and driving tempos.”

The program will open with the overture to Dukas’ one-act 1911 opera, “La Péri.”

“I wanted something brash and bold and colorful to start the program, so that’s why I chose the fanfare with just the brass players,” Meyer said. “It’s really short, but it’s really impressive. It gets your attention right away.”

Reindl noted that Dukas may be best-known for his symphonic poem,” The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” which was used in the 1940 Disney animated film, “Fantasia.”

The symphony also will play Franck’s Symphony in d minor from 1888, in which Meyer perceives a Wagnerian influence.

“It’s as if a French composer had inhabited Wagner’s body, or vice versa,” Meyer said. “You have these long-spun, romantic melodies, these gorgeous organ-inspired sonorities. Franck was a fine organist in his own right, and in some ways transfers that sensibility for color to his orchestral writing, which gives it an immediate appeal from that standpoint.”

The work has gone in and out of vogue through the years, Reindl noted, having last been performed by the Westmoreland Symphony during the 2004-05 season.

Tickets for “In the Key of Love” are $18-$63. A link to the livestream is $20 per household. Student rush tickets will be $5 at the door.

Masks are required inside the theater.

For more information, call 724-836-8000 or visit westmorelandsymphony.org.