Music in the Mountains will cap the 2013 season with a full weekend of concerts under the big tent at Durango Mountain Resort.
Tonight, festival favorite Carl Topilow will borrow the baton from Guillermo Figueroa to lead the Festival Orchestra in a night of big band-style swing. Topilow has served as guest conductor in recent years for the Pops Night benefit but will appear on the final weekend this year for a change.
For classical purists, the “Swing, Swing, Swing” program will feel more like a night at Radio City than Carnegie Hall. On the bill are standards by Gershwin and Porter as well as a few Broadway show numbers, and more than a few seats will be sacrificed to make room for a dance floor.
The orchestra will return to more familiar ground at Saturday’s concert, “Flights of Fancy.” Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 in C and Stravinsky’s “Firebird” suite will sandwich a performance by Jacqueline Audas, the young violinist who took the Grand Prize in last week’s fifth annual Conservatory Young Artist Competition.
“Symphonic Poetry” will close the festival Sunday evening. Figueroa will bid farewell to Southwest Colorado for another year with a diverse program featuring two world-class soloists. After opening with Franz Liszt’s “Les Préludes, Symphonice Poem No. 3, cellist Jesús Castro-Balbi will take the lead on young composer Jimmy López’s “Lord of the Air.” Castro-Balbi performed the world premiere of the piece earlier this year in Texas.
In the penultimate selection, violin star Rachel Barton Pine will solo on Henri Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Minor. Barton is an international fixture, having performed with the world-renowned symphonies of more than 10 global and U.S. cities. She also has released 16 studio and live albums. The concert, and the festival, will wrap up with Antonin Dvorák’s “Scherzo Capriccioso.”
