JoAnn Falletta is right at home on PRSO podium.
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 14 hours ago
- 3 min read
By PEGGY ANN BLISS
Special to The STAR
One of the world’s finest female orchestra conductors, JoAnn Falletta, is back in San Juan, bearing musical wealth galore from the North.
And as this unique product of the Big Apple steps up to that Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (PRSO) podium Saturday night, she’ll bestow Yankee goodies with pride and love.
Falletta and the ensemble’s 75 musicians will reunite over three of the most iconic musical compositions born in the USA during the last century. This North American trio of masterpieces -- undoubtedly the largest display a local concert audience has ever heard -- would make any nation proud. Falletta, who feels right at home here, succeeded the PRSO’s musical director Maximiano Valdés in 1999 at the helm of the Buffalo (N.Y.) Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO).
A favorite podium
The offshoot of Italian roots will bond once again with a beloved orchestra in an evening of nostalgic reconnections.
The PRSO is “superb,” in the words of Falletta, who spoke with The STAR this week via text.
“Their musicianship is excellent and their passion for music is deeply moving,” she said.
Retired violinist Elena Sherbanesco, who has responded to Falletta’s baton in “at least three” local concerts, echoes the sentiment.
“It was a pleasure to make music under Maestra JoAnn Falletta,” she told this writer.
“She was a time machine,” she joked, referring to the conductor’s efficiency in getting balance, tempi and harmony in perfect synch without wasting a minute.
“She was also kind and respectful,” she added.
Shared experiences
Everything about Saturday’s concert is copacetic, because Valdés and Falletta are longtime colleagues.
“Max is a treasured friend and a welcome guest (conductor) in Buffalo,” she said.
Valdés left the BPO for Oviedo, Spain, where he guided the Symphony Orchestra of the Principality of Asturias toward a new era, fulfilling a significant Naxos Records contract of Spanish and Latin American music. During her own long tenure in Buffalo, Falletta was doing much the same thing as Valdés in Spain, but with American music. She made almost half her recordings on Naxos, carving out a niche for Buffalo, which even has its own record label Beau Fleuve (French for Beautiful River. The phrase was later corrupted into “Buffalo” by English settlers).
An indefatigable cheerleader for her homeland, Falletta has made more than 135 records, mostly of North American and women composers, forgotten and emerging.
Valdés and Falletta, both in their seventh decade of life albeit from two hemispheres, have known each other for decades and are reciprocally appreciated in both Buffalo and San Juan.
“She’s a great person and a great conductor,” Valdés said when asked about his pioneering colleague.
A strong dose of USA
The 13th concert in the PRSO’s present season will undoubtedly be the strongest dose of Americana local audiences will ever get.
The orchestra will open with a foot tapper by one of the culture’s most admired composers and conductors: Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) who penned “Three Dance Episodes” adapted from the Jerome Robbins ballet “Fancy Free.” The piece follows three young soldiers at the end of World War II in New York City. One moment is jubilant, another is introspective (even degrading), and a third ends with a dazzling display of Times Square and the bottomless emotion of this particular day in 1944.
A tour de force of strings
After the swinging curtain-raiser, the audience will hear from Canadian virtuoso violinist Nikki Chooi, playing Samuel Barber’s “Violin Concerto,” a piece Chooi loves and plays often, according to Falletta.
She ought to know: Chooi, 37, who is of Indonesian-Chinese heritage, is her much appreciated concertmaster at the BPO. Having just signed for his second five years in the chair, Chooi often accompanies Falletta to her many conducting venues throughout the world.
Falletta, who is married to a clarinet player who also often travels with her, has signed a contract to take her to 30 years with the BPO, one of the longest tenures of any conductor.
Chooi, who performed locally three years ago with La Maestra, is also concertmaster of the Santa Fe (N.M.) Opera Orchestra and former concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In that same year of 2023 the violinist played a duo with Yo-Yo Ma, when the famed cellist appeared with the BPO.
The culminating work of the evening also provides the title for this penultimate concert of the current classical season, “Maximo Movimiento.”
The concert will begin at 7 p.m. in the Pablo Casals Symphony Hall at Luis A. Ferré Performing Arts Center in Santurce.
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