The CSO Performs BEETHOVEN & DON QUIXOTE This Weekend

Beethoven's most engaging symphony shares a program with Strauss' wise, compelling tone poem tracing the whimsical adventures of an aging, chivalrous Spanish knight, and sensuous, rollicking selections from Falla's ballet The Three-Cornered Hat. Led by guest conductor Andrew Grams, the program will feature the CSO's principal cello Luis Biava and principal viola Karl Pedersen.

The full program includes Falla's Suite No. 2 from The Three Cornered Hat, Strauss' Don Quixote, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 8.

The Columbus Symphony presents Beethoven & Don Quixote at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.) tonight, November 21, at 8pm and Saturday, November 22, at 8pm. Tickets start at $10 and can be purchased at the CAPA Ticket Center (39 E. State St.), all Ticketmaster outlets, and www.ticketmaster.com. To purchase tickets by phone, please call (614) 228-8600 or (800) 745-3000. The CAPA Ticket Center will also be open two hours prior to each performance. Young people between the ages of 13-25 may purchase $5 All Access tickets while available. For more information, visit www.GoFor5.com.

The 2014-15 Masterworks Series is made possible through the generous support of season sponsor Anne Melvin.

Music Director of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra of Illinois and one of America's most promising and talented young conductors, Maestro Grams was a protégé of Franz Welser-Moest and served as

Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra from 2004-07. He has since led several concert programs with the Cleveland Orchestra, and returned to conduct it at the 2014 Blossom Music Festival. He has appeared with many of the great orchestras of the world including the Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Detroit Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington DC.

Biava is principal cello of the CSO, artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Dublin (CMSD), conductor of the Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra, and Camarata and Music Director of the New Albany Symphony. His first cello studies were with his uncle Miguel Uribe in his native Colombia, and he performs regularly in the Trio Biava-Uribe with his aunt (Blanca Uribe, piano) and his father (Luis Biava, violin). He has performed solos with the CSO; the symphonies of Savannah, U. of Michigan, Temple U., Bogotá, and Westerville; Upper Arlington Community Orchestra; Filamonica de Bogotá; and Antioquia Symphony of Medellin. He has performed as recitalist on the east coast, Puerto Rico and Colombia, South America as well as many chamber music concerts with CMSD and Camarata, the High Street Four String Quartet and the Canaletto Ensemble. Biava is currently an adjunct professor at Kenyon College and on the faculty of FOSJA in San Juan Puerto Rico. In March 2011, he performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto with his wife Ariane Sletner, and with Blanca Uribe under the direction of his father Luis Biava with the New Albany Symphony. He received the Empleos and Employment Ohio Diversity award for Latinos making a difference.

Pedersen was rotating principal of the New World Symphony in Miami for three years, and principal viola of the Breckenridge Music Festival for two years. He has recorded and performed with the Kansas City Symphony, and performed with the Virginia Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Cedar Rapids Symphony, Quad Cities Symphony, and as concertmaster with the Oskaloosa and Ottumwa Symphonies. An avid chamber musician, he is also a member of the Merdian String Quartet, which had residencies the past three years at the Strings Music Festival in Steamboat Springs, CO. Outside the US, he has performed in France, Spain, and the Dominican Republic. A former recipient of the Peabody Career Development Grant, he is currently on the faculty at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Falla was a Spanish composer and considered one of the country's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century. His image was on Spain's 1970 100-pesetas banknote. The Three-Cornered Hat is a ballet choreographed by Leonide Massine with music by Manuel de Falla commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev that premiered in 1919. The story - a magistrate infatuated with a miller's faithful wife and his attempts to seduce her - is derived from the novella by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón and has also been traced in film several times, usually in Spanish.

Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras known for his operas, tone poems, and orchestral works and also a prominent conductor throughout Germany and Austria. Don Quixote is his tone poem for cello, viola, and large orchestra based on the novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes. Strauss composed this work in Munich in 1897, and the premiere took place in Cologne on March 8, 1898.

Greenwood is an English musician and composer best known as a member of the rock band Radiohead. Beyond his primary roles as Radiohead's lead guitarist and keyboardist, he is a multi-instrumentalist and also plays viola, harmonica, glockenspiel, ondes Martenot, banjo, and drums. Greenwood composed the soundtracks for the films Bodysong (2003), There Will Be Blood (2007), Norwegian Wood (2010), We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), and The Master (2012). He received a Grammy nomination for Best Score for his work on There Will Be Blood, an American epic drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano that tells the story of a silver miner turned oilman on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California's oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

German composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include nine symphonies, five concertos for piano, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets. He also composed other chamber music, choral works, and songs. His Symphony No. 8 in F Major is a symphony in four movements composed in 1812. Beethoven fondly referred to it as "my little Symphony in F," distinguishing it from his Sixth Symphony, a longer work also in F. The work is generally light-hearted, though not lightweight, and in many places cheerfully loud, with many accented notes. Various passages in the symphony are heard by some listeners to be musical jokes.

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