The Bucks County Symphony Orchestra presents its Winter Concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 18, at Central Bucks High School South in Warrington.
The performance will be conducted by Music Director José Luis Domínguez and Assistant Conductor Sebastian Grand.
The concert is sponsored by L. Eugene Brown, in memory of Nancy Pond Brown.
Featured guest soloist is Henry Kramer, a Steinway Artist acclaimed for his “astonishingly confident techniques” [The Cleveland Classical Review] and “thrilling and triumphant performances” [The New York Times]. A graduate of The Juilliard School and Yale University’s School of Music, and an award winner in several of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions, Kramer joins the BCSO on Peter Tchaikovsky’s majestic “Piano Concerto No. 1 in Bb minor.” Composed in 1875 and debuted that same year in Boston by famed German piano virtuoso and conductor Hans von Bülow, this is perhaps the most well-known of all piano concerti. Von Bülow praised its originality, nobility and strength, noting that “this true gem shall earn [Tchaikovsky] the gratitude of all pianists.”
The BCSO opens the concert with the Overture to Mikhail Glinka’s magical operatic fable, “Ruslan and Ludmila.” Although the opera has never been highly regarded and is rarely performed, the brilliant and melodic overture, based on music from the wedding banquet in the opera’s final act, has become a favorite curtain raiser for symphonic audiences. Glinka, often called the Father of Russian Music, inspired such 19th-century composers as Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky.
Grand will lead the orchestra in a performance of Johannes Brahms’ warmly lyrical “Symphony No. 2 in D.” The work was debuted in 1877 by the Vienna Philharmonic under well-known pianist-conductor Hans Richter. Composed by Brahms during a pleasant summer at the Austrian lakeside resort of Pörtschach, this symphony has remained highly popular with audiences the world over.
Tickets, $25 for adults and $20 for seniors, can be purchased in Doylestown at Rutherford’s Camera Shop and the Doylestown Bookshop, or online at BucksCountySymphony.org. Students are admitted free. Call 215-348-7321 or visit the website for information.
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