May 1, The Apollo Orchestra

The Apollo Orchestra, featuring renowned cellist soloist Amit Peled

Sunday, May 1st, 4:00 pm

Founded in 2010, The Apollo Orchestra provides a platform for many of the Washington DC area’s finest professional freelance classical musicians. The orchestra, composed of highly experienced players, including members of D.C.’s Premier military bands, joins forces with well-known opera stars and accomplished international instrumental soloists for an annual series of concerts throughout the DC area.

Program
Carlos Simon: Fate Now Conquers (2020). Carlos Simon is Composer-in-Residence at the Kennedy Center
Robert Schumann: Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129, Amit Peled, cello soloist
Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4, Op. 90. “Italian”

ABOUT AMIT
Praised by The Strad magazine and The New York Times, internationally renowned cellist Amit Peled is acclaimed as one of the most exciting and virtuosic instrumentalists on the concert stage today. Having performed in many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., Salle Gaveau in Paris, Wigmore Hall in London, and the Konzerthaus Berlin, Peled has released over a dozen recordings on the Naxos, Centaur, Delos, and CTM Classics labels. Musical America named Peled one of the Top 30 Influencers of 2015.

ABOUT CARLOS
Born in Washington, DC (1986) and raised in Atlanta, composer Carlos Simon has become one of America’s leading new voices in contemporary music. Named the Kennedy Center’s Composer in Residence for 2021/22, Simon’s musical output ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism. Additionally, Simon received the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization, recognizing extraordinary classical Black and Latinx musicians.
Composed in 2020, "Fate Now Conquers" is based upon an 1815 entry in Beethoven’s personal notebook…“But Fate now conquers; I am hers; and yet not she shall share In my renown’ that life is left to every noble spirit. And that some great deed shall beget that all lives shall inherit.” Mr. Simon further states, “Using the beautifully fluid harmonic structure of the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony, I have composed musical gestures that are representative of the unpredictable ways of fate. We know that Beethoven strived to overcome many obstacles in his life and documented his aspirations to prevail, despite his ailments. Whatever the specific reason for including this particularly profound passage from the Iliad, in the end, it seems that Beethoven relinquished to fate. Fate now conquers."