The Piano Concerto No. 2 by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff is one of the most beloved pieces in the repertoire, and this weekend, Joseph Seth Zamora will perform it in the season’s finale of the New Horizons Orchestra, with Jorge Martinez-Rios conducting. “It’s every pianist’s dream, honestly,” Zamora said in this interview with Intemezzo host Leora Zeitlin. “I remember looking at it when I was younger and thinking, ‘I can’t wait to play this with an orchestra,’ and now I am. It’s so awesome.” Zamora only began playing piano in high school, but advanced so quickly that when he was a freshman at NMSU, he won the New Horizon’s 2015 Young Artist’s Competition and performed with them for the first time.
“I don’t feel like a soloist when I’m rehearsing with the orchestra, I feel like we’re a unit, we’re an ensemble,” he said. In addition to the Rachmaninoff, the orchestra will play several shorter works by Russian composers Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin and Prokofiev, as well as “Finlandia,” by Jean Sibelius. “This is a great concert to get immersed in music, and to really enjoy the beauty and the power of it,” conductor Martinez said. You can hear more about the music, Rachmaninoff, Zamora’s background, and much more here:
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