WEEKEND WITH WIGGLESWORTH
Friday-Saturday: This week's Minnesota Orchestra program features the return of British conductor Mark Wigglesworth, leading Elgar's Enigma Variations and Shostakovich's 10th Symphony. The Enigma Variations portrays the composer and his circle of close acquaintances. It is heard in a unique version with actor Gary Briggle portraying Elgar and delivering brief spoken narrations drawn from the composer's writings. Shostakovich's 10th was a protest against the composer's tormentor, Stalin, and a statement of triumph upon his death in 1953. (8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls., $22-$84, 612-371-5656, minnesotaorchestra.org)
A PIANIST'S SPCO DEBUT
Friday-Saturday: Artistic Partner Edo de Waart was scheduled to conduct this week's St. Paul Chamber Orchestra concerts, but a debilitating back condition has forced him to withdraw. Scott Yoo has stepped in. The centerpiece of the concert is the SPCO debut of Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter, in Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto. The program opens with Mendelssohn's "Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave)," part of the Romantic era's obsession with Scotland, and closes with Strauss' Suite from "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme," music in the style of the French Baroque, discarded from a project with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal that ultimately became the opera "Ariadne auf Naxos." (10:30 a.m. & 8 p.m. Fri., 8 p.m. Sat., Ordway Center, 345 Washington St., St Paul, $5-$40, 651-291-1144, www.thespco.org)
WILLIAM RANDALL BEARD
