Pittsburgh Symphony stays fresh with debuts and premieres

Debuts and premieres are two key ingredients in keeping concert life fresh.

The next set of Pittsburgh Symphony concerts includes one of each: the overdue debut of Latvian violinist Baiba Skride performing one of the most popular concertos for her instrument, and the first local performance of one of Sergei Prokofiev’s seven symphonies.

Juraj Valcuha will conduct the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on Feb. 21 and 23 at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall. The program is Alexander Glazunov’s “Valse de Concert” No. 1, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with Skride as soloist and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 3.

Skride plays with top orchestras around the world and has an extensive discography on the Sony Classical and Orfeo labels. The BBC Magazine gushed that she’s “a throwback to the golden era of Heifetz.”

Not surprisingly, she was a child prodigy.

“I fell in love with music before I can remember how it happened,” she told a Boston Symphony interviewer last year. “Both my parents and my grandma were into music and were musicians. So basically, since I was a baby I was around music. And even the violin, I remember wanting to play it when I was 3, 4 years old. I remember my parents and teacher told me I was rather good at it straight away.

“But I never expected (a career) like this,” she said. “I grew up in the Soviet Union, and my dream was to get away from Latvia once in my life. I was not counting on being in a different country every week and playing with these amazing orchestras.”

‘360’ concert

The Tchaikovsky Concerto she’s playing at Heinz Hall has been part of her repertoire for a long time. In fact, she played it to win the prestigious Queen Elizabeth competition in Brussels, Belgium, in 2001.

She’ll also give a “360” concert on Feb. 22, which will offer a fuller picture of her artistic personality. This is an intimate concert series, featuring soloists performing with members of the orchestra, with the audience surrounding them on the Heinz Hall stage.

The program shows Skride’s love of traditional chamber music and of contemporary music. Alongside performances of music by Johannes Brahms and Antonin Dvorak, Skride and friends will play a Mozart paraphrase by Alfred Schnitke and a string quartet by Henryk Gorecki.

This concert will conclude with Felix Mendelssohn’s early and rarely heard Violin Concerto in D minor.

It’s somewhat surprising that the Pittsburgh Symphony is just now getting around to Prokofiev’s Third Symphony, since it was written in 1928 and the composer died in 1953. Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony is his most popular, along with his “Classical Symphony,” his first.

Prokofiev’s Third is anything but classical. It was derived from music he wrote for his opera “The Flaming Angel,” which was not performed in full until after his death. The four-movement symphony draws on some of the wildest and most colorful pages of the opera and builds to an apocalyptic climax.