MasterWorks III: Tchaikovsky's Romeo & Juliet

This concert will be conducted by Guest Conductor, Tito Muñoz.As part of a season shaped by shared stories and human connection,Tchaikovsky’s Romeo & Juliet explores love in its many forms—romantic, fragile, and transformative.

The evening opens with Anna Clyne’s This Midnight Hour, a fevered orchestral essay inspired by poetry from Juan Ramón Jiménez and Charles Baudelaire. The work’s dark lyricism, pulsating textures, and sudden eruptions evoke a sense of restless yearning—an apt prelude to the emotional volatility that follows.

Cellist Mark Kosower—principal of The Cleveland Orchestra—performs the world premiere of Daniel Perttu’s The Guises of Love, commissioned by the late Maestro Gerhardt Zimmermann for the Canton Symphony Orchestra. Inspired in part by the emotional undercurrents of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, Perttu’s work explores love in its many dimensions: passion, mystery, loss, and renewal. Written specifically for Kosower, the concerto is both personal and expressive—its second movement honoring the memory of Perttu’s father-in-law and Maestro Zimmermann. This emotional arc continues with Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, which looks back to Mozartian elegance while embracing the lyricism and introspection of Tchaikovsky’s own voice.

The program culminates with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture. A masterclass in thematic development and dramatic pacing, the piece distills Shakespeare’s tragedy into pure symphonic narrative. Few composers have captured emotional extremes so completely—or so devastatingly.