Haifa Symphony Orchestra of Israel Set for Jorgensen, 2/13

The Haifa Symphony Orchestra of Israel, with solo pianist Roman Rabinovich, will perform the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2014. The program, under the direction of Maestro Boguslaw Dawidow, will also include pieces by Weber and Dvorák. Glenn Stanley, a music historian in the UConn Music Department, will discuss musical points of interest at 6:45 p.m.

Israeli pianist Roman Rabinovich, winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition and first prize at the 2007 Animato Competition, will play the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in the first half of the program. Rabinovich made his debut at age 10 with the Israel Philharmonic under the baton of Zubin Mehta. He has performed in prestigious venues throughout Europe and the United States, including the Lucerne Festival, Davos Festival, Leipzig's Gewandhaus, Wigmore Hall, Carnegie, the Kennedy Center and the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory. The program opens with the Overture to Euyranthe, an opera by Carl Maria von Weber.

In the second half, the orchestra will play the Dvorák "New World" Symphony, Op. 95, which the Czech composer wrote in his time as director of the National Conservatory in New York City.

The Haifa Symphony was founded in 1950 and has become a musical focal point in northern Israel. Boguslaw Dawidow, its charismatic principal guest conductor, was general and music director of the Opole Philharmonic of Poland, his native country, and resident conductor of the Polish Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra. He also directed the Russian National Academic Symphony Orchestra in Tomsk, one of Russia's oldest orchestras, dating from 1879, and toured Europe with them in the late 1990s. In the 1980s he founded the Chopin Chamber Orchestra in Krakow and toured with that group throughout Europe and South America in 2009 and 2011. Dawidow has performed regularly with orchestras and opera companies in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Rome, Zürich, Moscow, London, Leningrad, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Mexico, the United States, Seoul, Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

This concert is co-sponsored by the Hillel Foundation at UConn.

Jorgensen was named Best College/University Performing Arts Center in the Hartford Advocate Best of Hartford Readers' Poll for both 2012 and 2013.

Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts is located at 2132 Hillside Road on the UConn campus in Storrs. Ticket prices are $47, $44 and $40, with some discounts. For tickets and information, call the Box Office at 860.486.4226, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., or order online at jorgensen.uconn.edu. Convenient, free parking is available across the street in the North Garage.

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