Grand Traditions
Sunday, October 25, 2026, at 1:30 PM
Chase Morrison Conducting
Scottish Rite Temple
463 Paseo De Peralta
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Admission is free and donations are appreciated.
Parking available at the venue
Every piece on this program looks back — Grieg to the baroque, Beethoven to Mozart and Haydn, Mendelssohn to a hymn already three centuries old. What each of them made of the past sounds like nobody else.
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Holberg Suite, Op. 40
Edvard Grieg
Grieg wrote this in 1884 for the 200th birthday of Ludvig Holberg, a playwright claimed by both Norway and Denmark. Rather than write something modern, he looked back to the music of Holberg's own time: five short movements in the old baroque dance forms, scored just for strings. The slow Air is the one people remember. The finale sounds like a country fiddler wandered into the orchestra, which is very Grieg.
Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major
Ludwig van Beethoven
featuring Julian Chen, piano
This is the concerto Beethoven used to introduce himself to Vienna, and he played the solo part himself. He was still writing inside the world of Mozart and Haydn, but his own voice keeps poking through in odd accents and abrupt changes of direction. The slow movement is unexpectedly tender. The finale is fast, funny, and over before you want it to be.
Symphony No. 5 (Reformation)
Felix Mendelssohn
Mendelssohn was 21 when he wrote this for the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the founding document of the Lutheran church. The finale takes Luther's hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, and hands it first to a single flute, then to more and more of the orchestra until everyone is playing it. It is about as emphatic an ending as symphonies get.