The award-winning West Virginia University Symphony Orchestra continues its 2014-15 season at the Creative Arts Center with a concert featuring music of great emotional energy that will feature faculty violist Andrea Priester Houde as soloist.
Conducted by Mitchell Arnold, director of Orchestral Studies at WVU, the concert will be held Feb. 26 at 7:30 p.m., in the Lyell B. Clay Concert Theatre.
“Concerto for Orchestra,” by Witold Lutosławski, will be the evening’s focal work. According to Arnold, it pushes the limits of virtuosity and emotional boundaries.
“The driving rhythms and near chaos of portions of the Concerto for Orchestra are balanced by moments of great serenity,” he said. “Only orchestral music is capable of such extremes and our students meet the challenge with their talent.”
Andrea Houde will perform William Walton’s deeply expressive “Viola Concerto,” which Arnold said explores the darker side of virtuosity. “There is very little bubble and fizz in this concerto,” he said. “It is music of great passion and depth that is emotionally captivating.”
Rounding out the program will be Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” for string orchestra, which will be conducted by graduate assistant conductor Hanjin Sa.
“Vaughan Williams chose a haunting Psalm tune by the 16th century English composer Thomas Tallis as the basis of his music,” said Arnold. “The tune’s soulful quality still resonates with listeners hundreds of years after Tallis set it down.”
Arnold said it is rare to have three such great works on the same orchestra program.
“Each one demands virtuosity from the orchestra, and each one is emotionally riveting,” he said.
Arnold received a doctorate in conducting from Northwestern University and has an extensive background in new music. Before coming to WVU, he was director of orchestras at Northern Illinois University and assistant director of orchestras at Northwestern University. He has also served on the faculties at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory of Music. In March 2013 he made his guest-conducting debut with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra in Charleston, and returned to conduct the orchestra in 2014.
Houde received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Memphis and a Master of Music in viola performance/pedagogy and a Graduate Performance Diploma at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. An active performer, she is the violist of the West Virginia Piano Quartet, former Principal Viola of the Lancaster Symphony, and was a nine-year member of the Maryland Symphony.
She is also a founding musician and Principal Viola of the Endless Mountain Music Festival in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, where she has performed and taught in the summers since 2006. She has performed in festivals including the Aspen Music Festival and School, Encore School for Strings, Brevard Music Center, the Castleman Quartet Program, Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, and Interlochen Arts Camp. As a two-time Peabody-Singapore Fellow, she traveled to Singapore to mentor students at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory and to perform with the Singapore Symphony.
The WVU Symphony Orchestra was one of only two collegiate orchestras invited to perform at the 2014 national conference of the College Orchestra Directors Association, and in 2013 the orchestra was awarded the American Prize Special Citation for Musical and Technical Excellence in a national competition. Arnold has been WVU’s director of Orchestral Activities since 2007.
For concert tickets and information, call the WVU Box Office at (304) 293-SHOW.
Check out the WVU Symphony Orchestra’s Facebook page and their website at http://wvuso.weebly.com/.
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