Alondra de la Parra conducts Strauss, Ibert, and a Gabriela Ortiz world premiere

The first of four medici.tv programs from the extraordinary Festival Paax GNP 2026 is an outright feast of musical styles, including the world premiere of a new work by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by the Impossible Orchestra and the luminous Alondra de la Parra! Alondra and her one-of-a-kind orchestra open the program, entitled "Memory, Spirit, and Wit," with the effervescent mischief of Strauss's tone poem Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks). The scene is now set for soloist Matvey Demin to light up the stage in Jacques Ibert's virtuosic Flute Concerto, one of the most difficult works for the instrument, whose concluding Allegro has been described as "a blast of fireworks suspended in midair." Finally, we are treated to the thrilling first performance of a Festival Paax GNP commission by multiple Grammy-winning composer Gabriela Ortiz, La Reina Roja (The Red Queen), an exploration of the role of women in the Maya civilization inspired by the 1994 discovery of the royal Tz'akab Ajaw, whose remains were covered in the red mineral cinnabar. "This narrative arc," says Ortiz, "represents, in some way, within my own sonic imagination, the strength and passion of everything that belongs to both the world of the past and that of the present."