All-Star Orchestra

NARRATOR: The idea was ambitious... [ Car horns honking ] ...the best musicians in the United States, one momentous week in New York City, performing in this all-star orchestra exclusively for our cameras to explore the most exciting music ever written to produce a television series... MAN: [ Snaps fingers ] NARRATOR: ...of masterpieces from music director Gerard Schwarz and for an audience of just you.

SCHWARZ: Welcome to "The All-Star Orchestra."

We're so happy you've joined us.

On today's program is the overture and ballet music from Richard Wagner's great romantic music drama "Tannhaeuser"; the dance suite from "Estancia," by Alberto Ginastera; and a joyful new work by Valerie Coleman, "Umoja, An Anthem for Unity."

The 20th-century composer Alberto Ginastera was, without question, one of the great South American composers.

This ballet, "Estancia," was commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein.

The choreographer he had in mind for this ballet was George Balanchine.

An estancia is a large cattle ranch and Lincoln Kirstein really wanted the depiction of the gauchos, the Argentinean cowboys.

This piece is in four movements.

The first is about the land workers, the gauchos working, difficult and an exciting day, and you'll see it's full of rhythm, full of percussion -- everybody's energetic.

The second movement is called the "Wheat Dance."

BOURIAKOV: It starts with a flute solo in 6/8 and it completely changes the mood.

SCHWARZ: And then that movement leads us to this incredibly exciting movement about the cattlemen.

Propulsive and exciting -- again, full of rhythm -- tremendous amount of work for the horn section.

RALSKE: It's real visceral writing for brass and, fortunately, for the horns.

SCHWARZ: And then the last movement is the "Malambo," the "Final Dance."

JULIAN: It is just so exciting.

RALSKE: Just captivating and it's intoxicating.

SCHWARZ: An extraordinary composer that is remembered, primarily, for this piece, but should be remembered for much more.

Richard Wagner's opera "Tannhaeuser" was premiered in Dresden in 1845.

A remarkable piece, his fifth opera, it's in the repertoire today.

And he was looking for a premiere of a new version of the revised version in the 1860s in Paris, so, in fact, it's called, now, the Paris version.

What's different about it?

Well, in Paris, they really wanted ballet music.

Ballet was a very important part of opera and Wagner really wanted to have a success and he expanded the ballet music.

He called it the Venusberg.

Tannhaeuser, the character, is torn between the sacred and the profane.

What the overture and Venusberg, or the overture and ballet music, represent, really, is the transformation from this opening of this "Pilgrim's Chorus."

ALESSI: Anyway, that's just a great melody.

SCHWARZ: And then it dissipates to the end, leading us to the profane, the Venusberg music, the music that takes place underground, where Venus is living since the beginning of Christianity.

GROSSMAN: The orchestra is simply going nuts, playing as loud and fast as we can.

MORTIMORE: And then it keeps adding instruments and getting kind of crazier and crazier, you know, like kind of like a dance that's getting more and more frenzied as the night goes on.

Maybe there's a little more wine or... MARTIN: And then the end of the Venusberg music has one of the greatest fanfare moments in all of Wagner for the trumpets.

Big, loud -- [ Scat singing ] Fantastic moment.

GROSSMAN: It's very, very exciting.

There's no doubt about it.

MORTIMORE: Kind of this wild ending.

ALESSI: Some of the greatest music ever written.

GROSSMAN: It's fast.

It's loud.

It's relentless.

It's relentlessly exciting.

MARTIN: Glorious piece of music.

CHEN: It's one of my favorite Wagner overtures.

JULIAN: It fires on all cylinders and it also hits all of the great melodic components without taking four or five hours to do so.

SCHWARZ: That's basically the conflict of this opera, and Richard Wagner brought it to incredible intensity, as you will see.

COLEMAN: "Umoja" came about many moons ago, about two decades ago.

This was the '90s.

Kwanzaa was making quite the emergence at the time.

And so, out of the principles of Kwanzaa, umoja was the very first principle and so, I decided to create a simple song that gave the message of unity and then the Philadelphia Orchestra came and said, "We heard this piece.

We'd like for you to arrange it for orchestra."

One thing I always like to say about music that is of umoja's nature is that, it not only sends a message, but it's also part of a vast tradition of passing stories down, passing heritage, just through the element of intuition and feel.

And so, you'll hear, within this piece, there's a lot of different things that kind of emulate drums -- African drums, but made within a classical framework.

You'll start to hear the thumb piano a little bit here and there.

And then, from all of that, you feel the Serengeti, you feel the wildlife -- you feel all of these things that are truly what I think is Mother Earth.

To me, Mother Earth is the core of unity.

And we're truly celebrating the moment and the message of unity.

SCHWARZ: Thank you so much for joining us.

On our next program, we'll feature music by Claude Debussy and Ottorino Respighi.