MUSIC

Rice University Shepherd School of Music presents the Shepherd School  Symphony Orchestra.  Friday, February 3, at 8pm. Stude Concert Hall - Alice Pratt Brown Hall. 

Featuring:
Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra
Larry Rachleff,  music director

Scheduled Program:

Bartók Violin Concerto No. 2 (SoJin Kim, (pictured) soloist; David Cho, conductor); and Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60, “Leningrad”.

UPDATE: The Shepherd School Symphony and Chamber Orchestras take the stage of Stude Concert Hall this weekend for their first concerts of the year. On Friday, February 3, the Symphony Orchestra presents two works that have become mainstays of twentieth-century orchestral repertoire: Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2 and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60, "Leningrad".

Both works were premiered within three years of one another (1939 and 1942, respectively), and were composed amidst the upheaval of a turbulent Europe and the Second World War. Perhaps in reaction to the surrounding instability, both composers chose to use conventional classical forms in their works.

The Bartók concerto, featuring graduate student SoJim Kim as violin soloist, employs a standard three-movement concerto form with theme and variations woven throughout. Associate Conductor David Cho will conduct.

Music Director Larry Rachleff then takes the podium to lead the orchestra in Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, dedicated to the city of Leningrad. Fraught with history and subject to various interpretations, the work is an outcry against the city's invasion by German forces in 1941. This is Shostakovich's longest symphony, a traditional four-movement work conveying emotional extremes of hope, grief, terror, and triumph.