The Minería Symphony Orchestra’s 2026 Summer Season continues with a program that brings together historical memory, contemporary composition, and one of the most intense symphonies in the Romantic repertoire.
Program 4 will be performed on Saturday, July 25, at 8:00 p.m. and on Sunday, July 26, at 12:00 p.m., in the Silvestre Revueltas Hall at the Ollin Yoliztli Cultural Center. Raúl Aquiles Delgado, associate conductor of the Minería Symphony Orchestra, will lead the orchestra, with Jesús Castro-Balbi as guest soloist.
Grażyna Bacewicz’s Overture opens the concert with a brief yet powerful piece, written during the Nazi occupation of Poland. The highlight of the program will be the world premiere of Ludsen Martinus’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, a work that incorporates Latin American rhythms, Afro-descendant traditions, and the sounds of the urban landscape.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 will close the concert with a powerful musical reflection on fate, existential conflict, and the pursuit of happiness.
Here are some tips to help you get the most out of every moment of the program.
Overture, by Grażyna Bacewicz: Music of Resistance
Grażyna Bacewicz composed her Overture for Orchestra in 1943, during the Nazi occupation of Poland. As violence and destruction transformed her country, the composer wrote a piece characterized by a firm pulse, an austere musical language, and great formal precision.
Bacewicz was a violinist, pianist, writer, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century Polish music. She studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and developed a musical language that combined structural clarity, rhythmic energy, and a constant drive for transformation.
For her, form was a central element. She compared composition to a structure in which no element could be placed at random. That discipline is clearly evident in the Overture: although it is brief, every musical gesture serves a purpose and helps maintain the tension.
You can learn more about her career as a performer and composer on the official profile of Grażyna Bacewicz published by Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, Poland’s leading music publisher. You can also read our article on who Grażyna Bacewicz was and how she transformed form into modern energy.
The history of the score reflects the extreme conditions under which it was created. During the destruction of Warsaw, Bacewicz managed to save almost all of her music, but she lost the score for the Overture. She later had to reconstruct it from memory.
The orchestration of the piece is brilliant, though not festive: there is no overt celebration, but rather a restrained strength that seems to stand firm in the face of the circumstances.
It premiered on September 1, 1945, at the Kraków Contemporary Music Festival, with the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mieczysław Mierzejewski.
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra by Ludsen Martinus: A Latin American Landscape Transformed into Sound
The highlight of Program 4 will be the world premiere of Ludsen Martinus’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, commissioned by cellist Jesús Castro-Balbi, who will perform the work for the first time.
Martinus is a Colombian composer and conductor born in 1999. His music builds bridges between the classical tradition, Caribbean rhythms, African heritage, and the sounds of contemporary urban life.
Born in Cartagena de Indias and with family roots in Colombia, Curaçao, and Bonaire, Martinus has developed a musical identity shaped by instruments such as the violin, piano, and saxophone, as well as by popular genres like champeta.
In his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, the composer weaves together references to the Hatajo de Negritos, cumbia rhythms, urban African elements, and street sounds. Even the honking of motorcycle taxis becomes a motif that runs throughout the entire work.
The Hatajo de Negritos is a Peruvian tradition of music, song, and dance, performed by groups of men accompanied by violin and bells. Along with Las Pallitas, it was inscribed on the Representative List of the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Martinus transforms these influences into symphonic material. He takes fragments of the everyday landscape, transforms them, and weaves them together within a musical structure consisting of three movements performed without a break:
- Mysterious – Calm
- Accompanied cadenza
- A bit cheerful
The world premiere of a piece offers a unique experience: no one in the hall knows its entire course yet. The audience, the orchestra, the conductor, and the soloist are all taking part in shaping its story for the very first time.
Jesús Castro-Balbi: the guest soloist
Jesús Castro-Balbi will perform the world premiere of the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, a work he commissioned himself and to which it is dedicated.
Of Peruvian descent and trained in France and the United States, Castro-Balbi has performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Seoul Arts Center, the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo.
As a soloist, he has performed with the symphony orchestras of Aarhus, Dallas, and Fort Worth; the Leipzig and Norwegian Radio Orchestras; and the philharmonic orchestras of China, Louisiana, and Mexico City.
His career has been deeply connected to the music of our time. He has participated in 72 premieres, made the world premiere recordings of 20 works, and 29 compositions have been dedicated to him.
He is currently a music professor at Kennesaw State University.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4: Fate Knocks at the Door
The second half of the program will be devoted to Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36, one of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s most intense and personal works.
It was written during one of the most difficult periods of his life. In 1877, the composer went through a serious personal and emotional crisis. He found vital support in Nadezhda von Meck, his friend and patron, to whom he dedicated the work with the inscription “To my best friend.”
Tchaikovsky explained in his correspondence that the central theme of the symphony was fate: an inevitable force that prevents one from fully attaining happiness. This presence is felt from the very beginning, heralded by the brass with a powerful motif that recurs throughout the work.
Although the composer offered a narrative interpretation of each movement, the music retains its power without needing to follow a specific plot. Its true impact lies in the way it transforms emotional conflict into symphonic architecture.
To learn more about the genre, its origins, and its evolution, check out our guide on what a symphony is. The composition process, instrumentation, and correspondence related to the Fourth Symphony are extensively documented in the specialized archive Tchaikovsky Research.
The piece has four movements:
- Andante sostenuto. Moderato con anima
- Andantino in the style of a canzona
- Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato
- Finale: Allegro con fuoco
Tchaikovsky acknowledged that the central theme of this symphony was related to Beethoven’s Fifth. Both works confront the individual with fate, but Tchaikovsky translates that conflict into a deeply personal musical language, marked by emotion, lyricism, and orchestral color.
It premiered in Moscow on February 22, 1878, under the direction of Nikolai Rubinstein.
Raúl Aquiles Delgado: Associate Director
Raúl Aquiles Delgado, associate conductor of the Minería Symphony Orchestra, will lead this journey that spans from historical resistance to contemporary premieres and the great Romantic repertoire.
A Venezuelan-Mexican conductor and cellist, Delgado was trained within the El Sistema de Orquestas de Venezuela network. Among his major influences are José Antonio Abreu and his father, the choral conductor and composer Raúl Delgado Estévez.
He has conducted more than 20 orchestras in Venezuela, including the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra, the Caracas Youth Symphony Orchestra, and the National Philharmonic Orchestra.
Since arriving in Mexico in 2017, he has collaborated with some of the country’s leading ensembles and has performed at venues such as the Sala Nezahualcóyotl, the Auditorio Nacional, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and the Teatro Juárez.
He has also worked as an assistant conductor to Gustavo Dudamel, Eduardo Marturet, and David Cubek, and has maintained a steadfast commitment to the musical education of children and young people.
Delgado was appointed associate conductor of the Minería Symphony Orchestra in 2022. His dual experience as a conductor and instrumentalist provides a particularly intimate perspective on the dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra. Learn more about the role of a conductor and their part in musical performance.
Strength, Beginning, and Destiny
Program 4 brings together three ways of transforming experience into music: Bacewicz’s historical resilience, Martinus’s Latin American landscape, and Tchaikovsky’s struggle against fate.
We look forward to seeing you on Saturday, July 25, at 8:00 p.m. and on Sunday, July 26, at 12:00 p.m., in the Silvestre Revueltas Hall at the Ollin Yoliztli Cultural Center, to experience this journey of strength, new beginnings, and destiny together.
