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THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
January 28, 2006
Symphony season honors Jamestown
NORFOLK — The Virginia Symphony Orchestra will dedicate its 2006-2007 season to the observance of Jamestown’s 400th birthday by featuring the music of composers who made their own journeys to America.
JoAnn Falletta, music director for the symphony, said that when she began planning last year, “I began to think about how many great composers came to the United States over the centuries – how this country has been a welcoming place for so many great composers.”
The season begins Sept. 9 with guest violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg performing Tchaikovsky’s Concerto for Violin in D Major and other works.
Tchaikovsky, of course, conducted at the opening night of New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1891. As a Russian composer visiting the United States for the first time, “he was considered extremely exotic,” Falletta said.
Rachmaninoff, the pianist and composer, was forced to leave his homeland for New York during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and spent much of his life in America. His Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor will be featured Sept. 24.
Also on the bill that night is Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7. The Czechoslovakian, born in 1841, lived in the United States for about 10 years, including a stint as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. He took the position provided that talented Native American and black students who could not afford the tuition must be admitted for free.
That evening will feature guest pianist Andrew von Oyen.
“It’s very inspiring to think of the many ideas that came to this country,” Falletta said. “We took what was a European art form and over the years made it our own.”
She noted a couple of other highlights.
The first concert, on Sept. 9, will include a piece that the orchestra has never played together, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”
“It’s very courageous of us,” she said.
On Oct. 7, the lineup will include Purple Rhapsody, a new viola concerto by Joan Tower that the symphony hasn’t played before. The piece by Tower, one of the nation’s leading women composers, was commissioned by a consortium of 10 orchestras, Falletta said. Its world premiere was in November, and violist Paul Neubauer will again perform the piece when it debuts in Hampton Roads.
The Jan. 27 performance, called “The British Are Coming,” is an all-British Isles concert to commemorate the 10th anniversary of when the orchestra made its Carnegie Hall debut in 1997, Falletta said. The selections will include Elgar’s “Enigma Variations,” which the orchestra played that night and hasn’t played since.
The symphony will announce its pops and PB&J Family concerts and other special performances in the next few weeks.
Subscribers who wish to renew for next season can use a new online renewal service, said Carla Johnson, president and executive director of the symphony.
The Friday morning Coffee Concerts inaugurated in the 2005-2006 season at the Ferguson Center for the Arts in the small theater have proven so popular that they will be performed in the 1,700-seat concert hall in 2006-2007, Johnson said, and will feature performances of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
Information is availabe at www.virginiasymphony.org and (757) 892-6366.
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The Virginia Symphony Orchestra with a complement of 79 professional musicians under the direction of Grammy-nominated Music Director JoAnn Falletta performs 140 concerts annually, reaching 200,000 concert goers every season in venues throughout the region. Our education and outreach programs reach 53,000 students and adult learners every year. The Virginia Symphony Orchestra is the cultural cornerstone of the performing arts in Hampton Roads.
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