Des Moines Symphony News

Program Notes: Anna Clyne This Midnight Hour 05/04/2023 In Symphony News

London-born Anna Clyne is one of the most gifted and accomplished of the current generation of young composers who are not only reinvigorating the orchestral repertory with such works as This Midnight Hour, but also expanding the reach of classical music in communities nationwide through their dedicated involvement with underserved audiences from schools to juvenile detention centers and memory care units.

Read More
Program Notes: Jacques Offenbach Music from Gaite Parisienne 04/17/2023 In Symphony News

The frivolity and tunefulness of the Parisian music hall of Jacques Offenbach is revived in Manuel Rosenthal’s arrangement of his music for the 1938 ballet Gaîté Parisienne.

Read More
Discover the World of Music during our 2023-2024 Season! 04/16/2023 In Symphony News

Discover the World of Music during the Symphony's 2023-2024 season! Subscribers at all price levels receive the absolute best discounts available. Lock in your favorite seats for the Masterworks Series, the Pops Series...or both! Click here to learn more.

Read More
Program Notes: Lili Boulanger D’un matin de printemps 04/14/2023 In Symphony News

D’un Matin de Printemps of the short-lived Lili Boulanger, gifted younger sister of legendary composition teacher Nadia, is imbued with the aura and sonorities of French Impressionism.

Read More
Program Notes: Camille Saint-Saens Cello Concert No. 1 04/10/2023 In Symphony News

Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 is among his compositions that adapt the traditional Classical genres of symphony, concerto and quartet to the sensibilities of Second Empire Paris.

Read More
Program Notes: Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9 04/06/2023 In Symphony News

Hector Berlioz was a pioneer in developing the orchestra of the late 18th century into the virtuoso ensemble of the Romantic age in such works as the glittering Roman Carnival Overture.

Read More
Program Notes: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74, “Pathétique” 03/06/2023 In Symphony News

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of his “Pathétique” Symphony in St. Petersburg on October 28, 1893, just a week before he died. Despite that chronology and the tragic nature of much of the Symphony, Tchaikovsky did not anticipate his own death in this music, but meant it to mirror the residual melancholy of his later years.

Read More
Des Moines Symphony Youth Concerts impact nearly 5,000 school children 03/06/2023 In Symphony News

A core part of our mission is to "create outstanding educational opportunities." Each spring, we invite fourth graders from all over Central Iowa to hear the Orchestra perform at the Civic Center in four special performances over the course of two days.

Read More
Program Notes: Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 26 03/03/2023 In Symphony News

Max Bruch was among the most respected German composers, conductors and teachers of his generation, and it was the masterful G Minor Violin Concerto of 1866 that established his reputation. “It is not easy to write as beautifully as Max Bruch,” assessed English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey.

Read More
Program Notes: John Wineglass' Alone Together 03/01/2023 In News

The COVID-19 pandemic left no one unaffected in personal or work life, which meant that the essential creative interchange between performing artists and with their audiences abruptly stopped in March 2020. Alone Together by Emmy Award-winner John Wineglass, premiered via livestream online by Carl St. Clair and the Pacific Symphony in May 2021, helped to bridge from that isolated time to the return of the full, in-person communal sharing of music that was yet another casualty of COVID-19.

Read More

Meet The Maestro

Support The Symphony

Des Moines Symphony News

Meet The Maestro

Support The Symphony

Your support of music in our community is more important now than ever!