Riverside Symphony Announces 41st Concert Season

Riverside Symphony will present a three-concert series of transformative programs featuring the orchestra's renowned blend of the familiar and the obscure under the baton of founding Music Director, George Rothman. The season, spotlighting three remarkable young soloists and composers, will launch and conclude at Tully Hall on December 8 and May 5 respectively, with a middle concert on Sunday afternoon February 5, at El Museo del Barrio's El Teatro.

The opening Alice Tully Hall program on December 8 will commence with the local premiere of Aurora by Nicolas Chuaqui before piano soloist Han Chen takes center stage in Mozart's seldom performed Ninth Piano Concerto, hailed by Alfred Brendel as "among the greatest wonders of the world." The program will close with Arthur Honegger's masterful, high-spirited Fourth Symphony, a historical favorite of Riverside Symphony.

The Sunday, February 5 program at El Museo del Barrio's El Teatro will open with the New York Premiere of Over the Wing by Ash Stemke (a winner of the Riverside Symphony's 2020 National Composer Reading Competition). Cello soloist, Anita Graef will make her New York concerto debut with a duo of Vivaldi cello concertos, joined by long-time principal cello, Greg Hesselink, for the rarely performed Concerto for Two Cellos. The concert will close with the orchestra's continuing celebration of Latin American composers, on this occasion with Ginastera's riveting gem, Concerto for Strings.

The orchestra's Friday, May 5 Alice Tully Hall season finale will begin with a playfully inventive opener by SiHyun Uhm, another standout winner of Riverside's 2020 Composer Competition. Young Concert Artists first prize winner Lun Li will be featured in his debut concerto performance in Prokofiev's enduring and endearing Second Violin Concerto before the season closes with Saint-Saens' Second Symphony, a lesser-known yet thoroughly rewarding masterpiece.

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