CSO to Perform Second Half of FESTIVAL: VIENNA 1900 with 'MOZART & SCHUBERT,' 4/22-23

In the second half of the CSO's Festival: Vienna 1900, CSO Music Director Rossen Milanov will conduct the Mozart & Schubert program featuring guest pianist Stewart Goodyear. In homage to Franz Schubert, the great pianist and composer Franz Liszt took Schubert's piano solo and transcribed it for piano and orchestra. The resulting Wanderer Fantasy is a dynamic and colorful work combining the talents of these two musical giants. Mozart's final and most masterful symphony anchors this absorbing and intriguing program.

The full program includes Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, Schubert/Liszt's Wanderer Fantasy, and Mozart's Symphony No. 41 ("Jupiter").

The Columbus Symphony presents the Mozart & Schubert at the Southern Theatre (21 E. Main St.) on Friday and Saturday, April 22 and 23, 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 2015-16 Masterworks Series is made possible through the generous support of season sponsor Anne Melvin.

Prelude - Patrons are invited to join Christopher Purdy in the theatre at 7pm for a 30-minute, pre-concert discussion about the works to be performed.

Postlude - Patrons of the Friday performance are invited to join the CSO musicians at Thurber's Bar in the adjacent Westin Hotel following the concert. Patrons of the Saturday performance are invited to enjoy post-concert tango demonstrations and sample Argentinian wine.

About CSO Music Director Rossen Milanov

Respected and admired by audiences and musicians alike, Rossen Milanov is the new Music Director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, and begins his tenure with transformative and creative ideas for new programming and expanding the orchestra's reach to new audiences.

Recently completing his first season with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra to enthusiastic acclaim, Milanov is also the Music Director of the Princeton Symphony and of the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias (OSPA) in Spain. During the 2015-16 season, he is dedicating the Princeton concert season to the creativity of women, showcasing the compositions of some of the most respected emerging female composers, such as Anna Clyne, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snyder. With OSPA, he celebrates the orchestra's 25th anniversary with 25 new works and premiere performances in Spain. He will also be conducting a new production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" at the Zurich Opera.

In 2015, he completed a 15-year tenure as Music Director of the nationally recognized training orchestra, Symphony in C, in New Jersey.

Milanov studied conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School, where he received the Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship.

About guest pianist Stewart Goodyear

Proclaimed "a phenomenon" by the Los Angeles Times and "one of the best pianists of his generation" by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stewart Goodyear is an accomplished young pianist as a concerto soloist, chamber musician, recitalist, and composer. He began his training at The Royal Conservatory in Toronto, received his bachelor's degree from Curtis Institute of Music, and completed his master's at The Juilliard School. Known as an improviser and composer, he has been commissioned by orchestras and chamber music organizations, and performs his own solo works. In the 2012 and 2013 seasons, Goodyear performed all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in one day at Koerner Hall, McCarter Theatre, and the Mondavi Center. His recording of the complete Beethoven sonatas has received a Juno nomination for Best Classical Solo Recording.

About composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

Schoenberg was an Austrian composer and painter. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. His Chamber Symphony No. 1 was finished in 1906, and premiered on February 8, 1907, in Vienna by the Rosé Quartet together with a wind ensemble from the Vienna Philharmonic, under the composer's baton. The piece is a well-known example of the use of quartal harmony.

About composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Liszt was a prolific 19th-century Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, philanthropist, and Franciscan tertiary. He gained renown in Europe during the early 19th century for his prodigious virtuosic skill as a pianist. Liszt was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age, and in the 1840s, he was considered to be the greatest pianist of all time. His Fantasie in C major, popularly known as the Wanderer Fantasy, is a four-movement fantasy for solo piano, widely considered to be his most technically demanding composition for the piano. Schubert himself said "the devil may play it," in reference to his own inability to do so properly.

About composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed more than 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. Mozart completed his Symphony No. 41 ("Jupiter") on August 10, 1788. It was the last symphony that he composed, and also the longest. It is not known whether it was ever performed in Mozart's lifetime..

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