USU Symphony Orchestra Presents its Annual Spring Concert
Utah State University's Symphony Orchestra with director and conductor Sergio Bernal.
The Utah State University Symphony Orchestra presents its annual spring concert, and this year Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade is in the spotlight.
The concert is Wednesday, April 27, at 7:30 p.m. in the Morgan Theatre of the Chase Fine Arts Center on USU’s Logan campus.
“Scheherazade is an exquisite, highly evocative score,” said Sergio Bernal, music director of the USU Symphony Orchestra. “Rimsky-Korsakov based the music of his symphonic suite on the Arabian Nights stories, with the orchestra depicting moods and representing characters from the tales.”
Amanda Marshall, the USU Symphony Orchestra concertmaster, will perform a violin solo that embodies Scheherazade, the storyteller in the Arabian Nights.
“Like the violin solos, many other of the orchestral parts [in Scheherazade] are very colorful and they bring interesting challenges to the players in the orchestra,” said Bernal. “I am very proud and impressed by how well the students are performing the music.”
According to Bernal, the cultural elements and vivid stories and music from Scheherazade and the Arabian Nights have captivated people for ages. These elements will be represented in a presentation from honors music student Ellyn Thornton, and through passages from the Arabian Nights read by languages graduate student Yasmine Kataw in both Arabic and English.
The USU Symphony Orchestra will also perform the ‘Leonore’ Overture No. 3 by Beethoven.
“The ‘Leonore Overture was written by Beethoven to open his opera Fidelio,” said Bernal. “However, the music was so strong that Beethoven felt it could overpower the opera, so he decided to write a separate, less involved overture for Fidelio. Ever since, Leonore stands by itself as a prominent concert piece.”
Both Scheherazade and Leonore are heroic female characters, Bernal said.
“The USU Symphony Orchestra celebrates women in this poetic, exciting concert.”
Tickets for the spring concert are $10 adults, $8 youth and seniors, $5 USU faculty and staff and free for USU students with ID. For more information, visit the CCA Box Office in room L-101 of the Chase Fine Arts Center, call 435-797-8022 or go see the college’s website.
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Writer: Samantha Kiser, 435-632-5524, samantha.noel.kiser@aggiemail.usu.edu
Contact: Whitney Schulte, 435-797-9203, whitney.schulte@usu.edu
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