Despite stormy weather across Houston, audiences filled Stude Concert Hall at Alice Pratt Brown Hall for a weekend of orchestral performances under the direction of Miguel Harth-Bedoya March 7-8 at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.
The Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra opened the weekend with a program featuring Nina C. Young’s “Tread softly,” Benjamin Britten’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” and Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2. Young, who visited campus as guest composer in residence, spoke briefly from the stage before the performance of her work. During her three-day residency, Young worked closely with Shepherd School orchestral and composition students, visiting rehearsals and offering individual lessons. Then March 7, the orchestra delivered a characteristically polished performance including Britten’s lively orchestral showcase, which the ensemble performed during the Shepherd School Family Concert earlier this season.
The Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra followed the next afternoon with “Springtime Rhapsody” featuring Piazzolla’s “Tangazo,” Schumann’s Symphony No. 1, “Spring” and the world premiere of Arthur Gottschalk’s “Tombeaux: pour un création d’une rhapsodie.” Gottschalk, professor of composition and theory at Shepherd, said he wrote the piece to be performed by pianist Milton Rubén Laufer ’03, who is now head of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University. Gottschalk addressed the audience before the performance, which drew enthusiastic applause for Laufer’s virtuosic and energetic playing. The audience included many of Gottschalk’s former students from his decades at Rice, close friends and family of Laufer and a group of Carnegie Mellon alumni from Houston to support the pianist.
“Tombeaux” marked the final 2025-26 season premiere of the new works commissioned by the Shepherd School to celebrate its 50th anniversary, an effort supported in part by Rice’s Office of Research. Pierre Jalbert will premiere “Another Starry Night” in full during the 2026-27 season. Learn about the other anniversary commissions here.
