[gentle orchestral music]
- Alexander Platt: I was living in the Twin Cities,
and the La Crosse Symphony was looking for guest conductors
in 1993, 1994.
And I had an absolutely wonderful time,
which I just retained in my memory
this wistful time discovering this beautiful city
nestled on the banks of the Mississippi.
And then, so, in 2010,
the LSO was doing a music director search.
So I was, at that point,
I was like the suitor standing at the doorbell
with the bouquet and the box of chocolates.
'Cause I really wanted to come to La Crosse
and settle down and do the work
I think I've always been meant to do.
So they blessed me with this wonderful job,
and it was the post-2008 world for orchestras
and there were profound financial challenges,
and we truly met those challenges
and through this beautiful community.
And to be enabled to give La Crosse
the best orchestra it could possibly have,
and that's been our journey together.
[bright orchestral music]
This is the last big concert of the season.
We start with one of the great,
world-class classical music soloists
from right here in the Midwest,
one of my greatest Chicago colleagues,
the great, great American violinist Rachel Barton Pine,
with whom I was very privileged to make,
many years ago, 20 years ago it was,
what remains a rather famous recording of a piece
called the Scottish Fantasy by Max Bruch.
So we celebrate that great partnership
that Rachel and I have had,
and also not only the personal partnership,
but again, this truly world-class musician
who is right here,
in our own neighborhood of the upper Midwest.
And she's gonna be playing
the eternally beautiful Violin Concerto of Brahms.
So that's gonna be a real honor to work with her on that.
[bright orchestral music]
Then after the intermission,
we wrap up the concert and wrap up the season
celebrating one of my great personal loves
in the repertoire, which is the French repertoire.
The gorgeous, glorious music of Maurice Ravel,
one of the masters of French Impressionism.
[bright orchestral music]
And we've put together a beautiful montage
of three works,
three of the greatest orchestral works of Maurice Ravel
that all center on the dance.
And I think it sums up everything we wanna do
as classical musicians, to give people this,
you know, I know it's an old-fashioned phrase,
but truth and beauty, beauty and truth.
To give people an ideal beauty that they,
now more than ever, cannot find anywhere else in our world.
But to do so in a way
that makes us all as individuals treasure what we have.
I've spent my whole life with music,
being a student of music.
I'm not a scholar, but a student of music, and I like to think,
a student of history and culture and the arts,
and I love sharing with people what I do know
by this point of the journey
about what makes this music great
and what makes it so relevant,
absolutely relevant to our lives,
and it's always a pleasure to share what I know.
And people seem to enjoy it,
or else they're just being even nicer than I think.
I'm now a man of 60,
and I've been plugging away at this conducting racket
for a good 40 years.
And I want to do everything I can
to continue what I've been doing to bring to La Crosse
the finest symphony experience they can possibly have.
To explore new and forgotten paths
in this great repertoire we have, and also to,
you know, to venerate the great familiar works
that we all know and love.
And I do like to think,
I hope I'll be forgiven for saying that I think, for me,
the La Crosse Symphony is the crown jewel
of the cultural scene in this Coulee region.
If that is a reflection
on what we've been able to do together for the last 15 years,
then I'll take the compliment.