M E D I A  A D V I S O R Y

February 7, 2018 – Richmond, Virginia Join the Richmond Symphony and Music Director Steven Smith on Sunday, February 25 at 3pm for a Metro Collection concert including Schubert’s Overture in the Italian Style in C Major, Roussel’s Concert pour petit orchestre, Handel’s Water Music & more. All Metro Collection concerts are held in the Blackwell Auditorium on the Randolph-Macon College campus.

Schubert’s Overture in C Major is all about simply-stated melody. It begins seriously enough à la Beethoven, but then the woodwinds launch into a cheery little tune over a simple string accompaniment. In the faster part of the overture, the strings play a frolicsome melody. The woodwinds try to add some seriousness, but to no avail. Like Rossini, Schubert increases the speed of the overture to end in a flash of brilliance.

Roussel wrote his Concerto for Small Orchestra just as he embraced a “neo-classical” style of composing. The first movement has a clean, transparent texture in spite of the busyness of its interweaving lines. It has a sort of rhythmic drive throughout, until it simply runs out of steam. The second movement has an ethereal, static quality with individual instruments playing long, stretched-out melodies above the ensemble. The short last movement has a hearty, vigorous rhythm that underpins melodic snippets that tumble over each other. The piece ends with a musical wink.

Handel wrote his Water Music for a boating party that King George I held in July of 1717. The King put his guests on boats and had them rowed up the River Thames to his house at Chelsea, where he served them dinner at one o’clock in the morning. Later, they all floated back to London, arriving at something like four o’clock. Handel’s Water Music is actually a set of three suites, each one in a different key and  using a slightly different orchestra. Each suite follows the typical Baroque pattern: an overture followed by a series of stylized dances. Each dance has a distinctive rhythm that the English audience would have recognized.

Tickets are $22 for adults, $20 for seniors, $10 for children and $10 at the door for college students and faculty with ID. Purchase tickets online at richmondsymphony.com or by calling 1.800.514.ETIX. A free pre-concert talk will be held from 2 – 2:30pm in the Dollar Tree Community Room on the second floor of Brock Commons across from the Blackwell Auditorium.

Many thanks to the Arts Council of Randolph-Macon College for their generous sponsorship of this concert.

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About the Richmond Symphony

Founded in 1957, the Richmond Symphony is the largest performing arts organization in Central Virginia. The organization includes an orchestra of more than 70 professional musicians, the 150-voice Richmond Symphony Chorus and more than 260 students in the Richmond Symphony Youth Orchestra programs. Each season, more than 200,000 members of the community enjoy concerts, and radio broadcasts. The Symphony also provides educational outreach programs to over 50,000 students and teachers each year. The Richmond Symphony is partially funded by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.