PPO to showcase French classical masterpieces

The Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra will return to the Samsung Performing Arts Theater on 6 November 2026 for the third performance of its 42nd season, with a program devoted entirely to French masterworks from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Under the baton of music director Grzegorz Nowak, the evening will feature familiar orchestral showpieces alongside Camille Saint-Saëns’s Third Violin Concerto, with soloist Kaycee Galano.

Mythology and Spanish rhythms

The program will open with Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, a piece inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem about a mythical faun who wakes from an afternoon slumber. When it premiered in 1894, the work’s fluid, ambiguous harmonies broke away from traditional German romantic structure and helped lay the groundwork for modern classical composition.

The rest of the first half will shift toward Spanish influences, with Maurice Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso. Originally written for piano, the orchestral arrangement mimics the rhythmic bounce of traditional Iberian music.

Ravel’s Boléro will anchor the center of the night. Commissioned in 1928 by Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein as a ballet score, the piece relies on an unwavering snare drum beat and two repeating melodies that build steadily toward a massive, explosive finale.

A young virtuoso returns

Galano will take the stage to close the program with Saint-Saëns’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor. Saint-Saëns wrote the piece in 1880 for Spanish virtuoso Pablo Sarasate, whom he had met two decades earlier when Sarasate was just 15 years old. The concerto demands technical precision and balances dramatic outer movements with delicate lyrical passages.

For Galano, the appearance will mark a continuation of her work with the national orchestra. She first performed with the ensemble in 2018 at age 17 under Yoshikazu Fukumura. Since then, she has built an international career, earned top honors at the 2021 Mary Lane Memorial Violin Competition and made her Carnegie Hall debut in October 2019.

The concert will begin at 7:30 pm in Makati City.