San Antonio Philharmonic's next concert features music evoking far-flung locales

The program to be performed on Nov. 18 and 19 will feature works by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst.

By Kelly Nelson on Thu, Nov 17, 2022 at 10:30 am

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Courtesy Photo San Antonio Philharmonic

Under the direction of guest conductor Christopher Wilkins, the orchestra returns to perform at First Baptist Church.

The San Antonio Philharmonic's latest concert will take listeners to inhospitable climes — from the frozen slopes of the South Pole to the far reaches of the solar system.

Under the direction of guest conductor Christopher Wilkins, the orchestra will perform Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sinfonia Antartica, which is derived from a score the composer wrote to accompany the film Scott of the Antarctic, a chronicle of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova expedition.

The Philharmonic will pair Sinfonia Antartica with a video created by Natural History New Zealand that features footage of the Antarctic landscape as well as film and photographic images from historic voyages to the continent, including Scott's tragic trek.

Rounding out the program is Gustav Holst's seven movement suite The Planets. If that number seems wrong, it's because the composer left out Earth and couldn't include Pluto because it had yet to be discovered.

Influenced by myth and astrology, Holst's Planets have remained steadfast in the popular imagination, from the inexorable, marching ostinato in "Mars, the Bringer of War" to the soaring melodies that mark "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity."

$30-$65, 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18 and Saturday, Nov. 19, First Baptist Church, 515 McCullough Ave., (210) 201-6006, saphil.org.

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