Pyotr Tchaikovsky composed his heart-on-his sleeve flag-waver of an orchestral tone poem, Marche Slave, to foster pan-Slavic solidarity during the 1876-78 Serbo-Turkish War. To make his point, he borrowed from Serbian folk tunes and the czarist national anthem. His Symphony No. 3 was given the most apropos sobriquet, Polish, largely for its Polish folk music-imbued Tempo di Polacca finale. Alexander Borodin is usually represented in the concert repertoire by the Polovtsian Dances, an exotic orchestral interlude evoking Central Asia, from his masterful unfinished opera Prince Igor. Monte Perkins leads the Festival City Symphony in all three works, concluding the orchestra’s Symphony Sundays season. The performance is at 3 p.m. on Sunday, May 3 at the Pabst Theater.
