BNY Mellon Grand Classics Features a Weekend of Enchanting French Music 3/17-19 AT Heinz Hall

The City of Paris has captured imaginations and inspired artists of all disciplines for generations. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and French conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier take audiences to this magical city during the BNY Mellon Grand Classics Weekend, "Bolero!" on March 17-19 at Heinz Hall.

With a program full of music originally composed for ballets, the weekend's concerts include movements from Offenbach's La Gaîté Parisienne, depicting a scene from a fashionable Parisian café in the mid-1800s, followed by Ravel's pulsating Boléro, which premiered at the Paris Opera in November 1928. Tortelier also will lead the orchestra in a performance of Stravinsky's Pétrushka, which tells the story of the loves and jealousies among three puppets. Maestro Tortelier has chosen to perform the 1947 version, which is the same year of his birth, in an early celebration of his 70th birthday on April 19!

A pre-concert talk, open to all ticketholders, with Assistant Conductor Andrés Franco will occur on stage one hour before each concert. On Sunday, the Sharps and Flats cello ensemble will perform one hour before concert start time in the Grand Lobby of Heinz Hall. Both pre-concert presentations are free and open to ticketholders. Program notes for the weekend are available online at pittsburghsymphony.org/Bolero and on the PSO mobile app the day of the concert.

The concert begins at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets, ranging in price from $20 to $94, can be purchased by calling the Heinz Hall box office at 412-392-4900 or visiting pittsburghsymphony.org/Bolero.

The Pittsburgh Symphony would like to recognize and thank BNY Mellon for its 2016-2017 title sponsorship of BNY Mellon Grand Classics. Fairmont Pittsburgh is the official hotel of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Delta Air Lines is the official airline of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Radio station WQED-FM 89.3 and WQEJ-FM 89.7 is the official voice of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.