February 24, 2016
M E D I A A D V I S O R Y
For Immediate Release

Mussorgsky, Beethoven & Shostakovich with the Richmond Symphony and guest pianist Orli Shaham

Saturday, March 5 at 8pm
Sunday, March 6 at 3pm
Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Arts Center

February 24, 2016 – Richmond Virginia The Richmond Symphony will perform concerts featuring works by Mussorgsky, Beethoven, and Shostakovich on Saturday, March 5 at 8pm and Sunday, March 6 at 3pm. The Altria Masterworks concerts will be led by Music Director Steven Smith and will be held at the Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Arts Center.

The performances will begin with a piece by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky – the original version of A Night on Bald Mountain featuring the Richmond Symphony Chorus. It portrays a witches’ sabbath on St. John’s Eve, complete with demons and devil worshipers.The piece was made familiar to American audiences when it was featured in an orchestral arrangement at the end of Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

Music Director Steven Smith will then welcome guest pianist and the Florence Robertson Givens Guest Artist, Orli Shaham. Ms. Shaham has established an impressive international reputation as one of today’s most gifted pianists and is hailed by the New York Times as a “brilliant pianist.” She will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Richmond Symphony. Beethoven composed this concerto in 1800, and it is a transitional work between the Classical and Romantic styles, featuring a dynamic style rich in the turbulent emotion for which he is most famous for today.

The evening will conclude with Dmitri Shostakovich’s great Symphony No. 6 in B Minor. Shostakovich lived in the era of Stalin and communist oppression. His Sixth Symphony can be seen as the composer’s attempt to carefully mock the system imposed upon him while weaving in the callings of his own conscience.

Tickets start at $10 online at richmondsymphony.com or by calling 1.800.514 ETIX. Altria Masterworks are free for children 18 and under with a paid adult ticket. College student single tickets are $7 and Soundwave college student subscriptions are available for $25.

The series sponsor is Altria. This concert is sponsored by Wells Fargo and McGuire Woods. The media sponsor is Boomer Magazine.

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About Orli Shaham, piano
About Steven Smith, conductor
About Erin R. Freeman, Director of the Richmond Symphony Chorus

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.

About the Richmond Symphony Chorus
James Erb organized the all-volunteer Richmond Symphony Chorus in 1971 for a December performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, under guest conductor Robert Shaw. For 36 years, Erb continued to direct and build the Chorus to reflect the Symphony’s high standards. Erin Freeman assumed leadership of the Chorus at the start of its 2007–08 season. The repertoire for its selected volunteer membership has included most of the standard repertoire for chorus and orchestra: Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, St. John Passion and Mass in B Minor, Haydn’s Creation, Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 and Choral Fantasy, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Requiem settings by Mozart, Brahms, Verdi and Faure, Mahler’s Symphony No.2, Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony and all of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe. Over the years they have also sung shorter choral-orchestral works by Handel, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, Delius, Debussy, Barber, Britten, Richard Strauss, Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen and Luigi Dallapiccola. Recent projects have included a performance and recording of Mahler Symphony No. 8 with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, under the direction of JoAnn Falletta, a performance with the Richmond Symphony in the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and a recreation of the Chorus’s inaugural performance of Missa Solemnis.

Contacts: Kelli Marakovits
Marketing and PR Manager
p. 804.788.4717 ext. 121
e. kmarakovits@richmondsymphony.com

Scott Dodson
Director of Advancement and Patron Communications
p. 804.788.4717 ext. 120
e. sdodson@richmondsymphony.com