Colorado Music Festival: Awadagin Pratt and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade

"Celebrated pianist Awadagin Pratt makes his Festival debut with music old and new, beginning with Bach’s nimble Keyboard Concerto in A major. Pratt then performs a piece he commissioned from lauded composer Jessie Montgomery; her Rounds is inspired by an epic poem by T.S. Eliot and the opposing forces that appear in nature — 'action and reaction, dark and light, stagnant and swift.' In Eastern folklore, the princess Scheherazade told the cruel Sultan 1,001 stories in order to save her own life; Rimsky-Korsakov borrows Scheherazade’s tales of royalty, festivals, sea voyages, and more in his richly orchestrated fantasy."

J.S. BACH: Keyboard Concerto in A Major BWV 1055
MONTGOMERY: Rounds for piano and string orchestra (2022)
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Scheherazade