Guest Artists Join North Carolina Symphony for Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony

The North Carolina Symphony brings a musical tour-de-force to Raleigh and Southern Pines when two internationally renowned guest artists, conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya and violin Augustin Hadelich, join forces with the orchestra for a pair of powerhouse masterworks: Sibelius's Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony.

The concerts, titled "Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony," begin at Lee Auditorium at Pinecrest High School in Southern Pines on Thursday, Oct. 13, followed by weekend performances at Meymandi Concert Hall in downtown Raleigh's Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Friday and Saturday, Oct. 14-15. All three concerts begin at 8:00 p.m.

Described by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as "one of the most exciting young conductors on the international scene," Harth-Bedoya has been the music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra since 2000. The artistic growth of that up-and-coming organization has turned its young maestro into one of the most sought-after conductors in the world. Harth-Bedoya has appeared with orchestras and operas from New York, Chicago and Boston to London, Berlin, Paris and Sydney.

He is joined on stage by Augustin Hadelich, a soloist who has "easily confirmed his place on the shortlist of today's top violin virtuosos," according to the Denver Post, and himself has earned unstinted praise for appearances with many of the world's most celebrated orchestras.

Harth-Bedoya and Hadelich made their Carnegie Hall debuts together in 2008 in a performance of the Brahms Double Concerto with cellist Alban Gerhardt and the Fort Worth Symphony. The evening's program also included a certain symphony by Tchaikovsky. "The dynamic young conductor...and his players lived up to expectations," wrote The New York Times following that concert, "especially with their assured, rich-hued and impassioned account of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony."

Harth-Bedoya brings this noteworthy declaration to the North Carolina Symphony for its own reading of Tchaikovsky's symphonic masterpiece.

"The Fifth Symphony is splendid music, grand and dignified," wrote Tchaikovsky biographers Lawrence and ElisaBeth Hanson, "and its form expresses the content more satisfactorily than in any other of Tchaikovsky's large works for orchestra...[I]t is from first note to last noble. Never querulous, never playing to the gallery, it exposes the soul of a man which all must feel the better for knowing."

Hadelich is featured in the program on Sibelius's provocative and challenging Violin Concerto. Written at the peak of the composer's early success, the Concerto displays Sibelius's own proclivity for the violin, the instrument on which he specialized and only reluctantly gave up. It is a dark and emotional piece, brilliantly evoking "the sonorous halflights of autumn and winter," according to biographer Eric Tawaststjerna, through music that remains an absolute favorite among violin solos.

"It is one of the most complete concertos for violin," says North Carolina Symphony Music Director Grant Llewellyn. "It's very thorny, rugged, but brilliant as well. It's everything that is so great about Sibelius. It explores aspects of the violin that were unprecedented at the time."

The concert is completed by a feisty work from Harth-Bedoya's home continent of South America. Enrique Soro's Danza fantástica is an exuberant blend of Soro's Chilean heritage with his Italian training - one brilliant and propulsive, the other lyrical and rhapsodic.

"It's a sort of dash for orchestra," adds Llewellyn, "which makes a nice contrast to the Sibelius."

Regular tickets to the Duke Medicine Classical Series Raleigh performances of "Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony" on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 14-15 range from $33 to $63, with $30 tickets for seniors. Regular tickets to the Southern Pines Series performance on Thursday, Oct. 13 range from $27 to $42.

Students receive $10 tickets in both venues.

Meymandi Concert Hall is located in the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts, 2 E. South St., in Raleigh. Lee Auditorium is located at Pinecrest High School, 100 Pinecrest School Road, in Southern Pines.

Beyond the Stage

Pre-concert talks and "Meet the Artist" events are held before Symphony concerts across the state. These engaging conversations offer a unique perspective on the evening's featured composers, the chance to ask questions and hear the inside story on what to listen for.

For "Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony," Josiah Stevenson will host "Meet the Artists" in the Pinecrest High School band room on Thursday, Oct. 13 at 6:45 p.m.

In Raleigh, Dr. Randolph Foy of North Carolina State University will present a pre-concert talk in the Meymandi Concert Hall lobby on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 14-15 at 7:00 p.m.

About the North Carolina Symphony

Founded in 1932, the North Carolina Symphony performs over 175 concerts annually to adults and school children. The orchestra travels extensively throughout the state to venues in over 50 North Carolina counties. The orchestra employs 67 professional musicians under the artistic leadership of Music Director and Conductor Grant Llewellyn, Resident Conductor William Henry Curry and Associate Conductor Sarah Hicks.

Based in downtown Raleigh's spectacular Meymandi Concert Hall at the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts and an outdoor summer venue at Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary, N.C., the Symphony performs about 60 concerts annually in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary metropolitan area. It also holds regular concert series in Fayetteville, New Bern, Southern Pines and Wilmington and individual concerts in many other North Carolina communities throughout the year.

For tickets, program notes, podcasts, musician profiles, the Symphony blog and more, visit the North Carolina Symphony Web site at www.ncsymphony.org. Call North Carolina Symphony Audience Services at 919.733.2750 or toll free 877.627.6724.

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