by Kurt Gottschalk | Bachtrack

As communities across the United States prepare for the 250th anniversary of the nation’s Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia and its namesake orchestra are coming at the commemoration from a somewhat different angle. The Summer of 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts and the 150th of the 1876 World’s Fair, both in what is now Fairmount Park, the city’s largest municipal open space. The amphitheater grounds have been given an extensive makeover, quadrupling the size of the plaza and adding vendors, seating, a 4,900 square foot LED screen (contractually prevented from displaying advertising) and, most importantly, a new sound system. 

The World’s Fair anniversary was marked with the world premiere of A Hundred Years On, an oratorio composed by Peter Boyer with a libretto by Mark Campbell and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Anthony Parnther. Five singers were joined by The Crossing – a choir adventurous enough to have premiered and commissioned works by Gavin Bryars, David T. Little, Nicole Lizée, and a set of responses to Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri.

The evening began with Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker leading the orchestra in the National Anthem, followed by John Williams’s Liberty Fanfare, written in 1986 for the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. At under five minutes, it was brief and anthemic. Even the non-anthems of the noted film composer can be taken or left at one’s own discretion, but the piece worked well to introduce the huge orchestra and the wonderfully warm sound of the cedar-lined amphitheater.

Sandwiching Julia Wolfe’s Liberty Bell (co-commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra) between Williams and John Phillip Sousa seemed a genius joke. The Philadelphia-born composer and Bang on a Can co-founder composed the piece to “give voice back” to the iconic bell, which has been silent since it gained its famous crack in 1846. It’s a clamorous piece (“liberty is not quite a tidy process,” she wrote in the program notes), as exciting as a Bernard Herrmann theme. Strings rose like mercury, chimes and percussion marched steadily In a ten-minute rush. The tension led to a perhaps unexpected release, something very nearly victorious, and then amped that up to a resolve that was comic, ironic or genuinely exultant.

Patriotic music can be a tricky gambit, at least for those who don’t let their love for country go unchecked. Sousa has scored generations of American parades and Stars and Stripes Forever is likely his most famous theme. His joyful stridency can be quite funny (there’s a reason the Monty Python crew picked his Liberty Bell as the opening theme for their Flying Circus.) The orchestra brought passion and precision to the piece, and smiles and mid-point applause from the audience, as they played it like a promenade of ducks.

The premiere that occupied in the second half of the concert carried some similar emotion and occasional bombast, softening the blow of jingoism by looking to an earlier era of hope and broken promise. Certainly dreams and idealism are part of the American story, even when women and blacks are under renewed attack. The vocal and choral writing showed the strongest composing and the most effective texts questioned the American Dream: a woman finding nothing about suffrage in the Women’s Pavillion, a Black man employed at a fairground restaurant celebrating plantation life and an immigrant from Poland wondering what she had even hoped to discover by attending the fair. But much of the cycle felt hollow. One wonders if some of the better songs might find independence of their own in years to come.