Chopin in Paris

Wednesday – Sunday: Noon – 6:00pm
Monday – Tuesday: Closed*
Calls: (925) 943-7469
Walk Up: 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek, CA 94596
*In addition to the hours noted, the Ticket Office is also open one hour prior and thirty minutes after curtain for ticketed performances, including performances on Mondays, Tuesdays, and most City holidays.
featuring Maria Radutu, piano
February 4 - 5, 2023
Chevalier de Saint-Georges—The Anonymous Lover
Chopin—Piano Concerto No. 1
Franck—Symphony in D minor
Running Time: approx. 1 hour 55 minutes, with one intermission
- French Caribbean composer Joseph Bologne, also known as Chevalier de Saint-Georges, was born in 1745 in the French colony of Guadaloupe to a wealthy white plantation owner father and enslaved mother. Sent to Paris at 13 to gain an education, Bologne became a master swordsman, renowned violinist, and accomplished composer. The Anonymous Lover is an overture from one of his six surviving operas.
- Fréderic Chopin settled in Paris at 21 but his first piano concerto was composed a year earlier in 1830, in his native Poland. Memorable, romantic, and popular with audiences, the piano is very much the star of this piece.
- Born in Liège, Belgium, César Franck sought his fortune in Paris and achieved renown as an organist, teacher, and composer. From the 1920s until it inexplicably fell out of favor in the 1960s, American audiences couldn’t get enough of Franck’s sensuous and passionate Symphony in D minor. We revisit the groundbreaking piece that inspired a generation of up-and-coming French composers.