The West Virginia University Symphony Orchestra will perform works by Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner during a concert at the Creative Arts Center, Thursday (Nov. 18).

The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Lyell B. Clay Concert Theatre under the baton of Maestro Mitchell Arnold, director of Orchestral Studies at WVU.

In addition, WVU voice professor Hope Koehler, soprano, will join the orchestra to perform a work by WVU music professor David Taddie.

“Performing the Brahms’s turbulently dramatic ‘Symphony No. 1 in C Minor’ gives us an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the truly visceral impact of a great classical work and the skill of our orchestra,” Arnold said.

“The gut-wrenching turmoil of the opening movement is balanced by the more placid nature of the middle movements,” he said. “But we have to wait until the final moments of the finale for the stormy sounds of conflict to be truly resolved.

“Also on the program is David Taddie’s beautiful settings of Japanese poetry ‘Five Haiku,’ featuring Hope Koehler as soloist. These settings for singer and small orchestra are concise yet expressive. The transparency of sound serves to balance the more densely textured orchestrations of the Brahms Symphony.”

Completing the program is the invigorating “Hungarian Dance,” also by Brahms, and Wagner’s powerful Prelude to his opera “Die Meistersinger.”

For concert tickets and information, call the WVU Box Office at (304) 293-SHOW.

-WVU-

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.