The Shepherd School of Music’s Symphony and Chamber orchestras will perform the first concerts of the academic year at 8 p.m. Oct. 2-3 and Oct. 4, respectively. The performances will take place in Alice Pratt Brown Hall’s Stude Concert Hall. Larry Rachleff, director of orchestras and the Walter Kris Hubert Professor of Music, will conduct the performances.
The concerts will showcase members of the Shepherd School’s acclaimed performance faculty as soloists in what Rachleff said are sure to be “varied and colorful” opening concerts.
“Once again, we get to begin the season with two wonderful programs for the Symphony and Chamber orchestras,” Rachleff said. “These concerts feature the incredibly gifted students from the Shepherd School, now one of America’s pre-eminent institutions.”
The Symphony Orchestra’s program will open with what Rachleff calls “a fiery tour de force” — Strauss’ “Salome’s Dance, Op. 54,” followed by Brahms’ “Concerto for Violin & Violoncello in A Minor, Op. 102,” featuring Shepherd School faculty soloists Cho-Liang Lin and Desmond Hoebig. The program will conclude with one of the widely acknowledged modern masterpieces of the orchestral repertoire, Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring).” Rachleff noted that many listeners will recognize Stravinsky’s “extraordinary” piece from the 1940 Disney animated film “Fantasia.”
The Chamber Orchestra performance will feature faculty members Richie Hawley and Benjamin Kamins in Strauss’ “Duet-concertino” for clarinet and bassoon. Pianist Brian Connelly will then take the stage in Messiaen’s rarely performed “Oiseaux Exotiques (Exotic Birds),” which will be directed by Jerry Hou, associate conductor at the Shepherd School. Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, ‘Pastorale,'” which Rachleff calls “one of the most touching works of the 19th century canon,” will close the evening’s program.
Tickets are required (reserved seating at no charge) for the Symphony Orchestra concerts on Oct. 2 and 3. For reservations, call 713-348-8000. The Chamber Orchestra concert on Oct. 4 is free and seating is first-come, first-served (no tickets required).
For more information, visit http://music.rice.edu/.
![NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL What happened to Texas’ tilt from red to blue? That’s a gray area Mark Jones, the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies, […]](https://news2.rice.edu/files/2015/08/DATELINE5-36x36.jpg "Dateline Rice for Oct. 4, 2021 (Weekend Edition)"){kind=small}
I remember fondly several years of exciting concerts led by Larry Rachieff at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara/Montecito. And I am delighted to find him leading the gifted Shepherd School young artists here in Houston. More power to him and his “tutis”