Dayton, Ohio (May 14, 2009) – On Friday, May 29 and Saturday, May 30 at 8 pm in the Schuster Center, Hank Dahlman and the DPO Chorus join the DPO and Music Director Neal Gittleman for the Miami Valley & Good Samaritan Hospitals Classical Series’ season finale, A World of Change. The concert features the works of Richard Wagner, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Ludwig van Beethoven. Richard Wagner’s Overture to Rienzi, his “effort to compose a fashionable ‘Parisian’ opera,” (Jennifer Hambrick, All Media Guide) opens the program. “Intended as a plea to avert war at a time when tensions in Europe were rising sharply,” (Robert Cummings, All Media Guide) Ralph Vaughn Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem, in its DPO debut, follows. “Since the crux of the Vaughan Williams piece is a description of war and a plea for peace,” Amy Vaubel, DPO Chorus Manager, states, “it is extremely intense in character. The chorus members literally have to sound like bugles, drums, and the marching feet of soldiers. It is, at one and the same time, a tremendous challenge – and a great joy – to perform.”
The program – and the Classical Series and 2008-2009 Colours season – concludes with the epic grandeur of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Guests soprano Andrea Chenoweth and baritone Jamie Cordes join the DPO to provide the musical brushstrokes for a superbly crafted exclamation point to the 2008-2009 Colours Season.
On both concert evenings at 7 pm in the Mead Theatre, DPO Music Director Neal Gittleman will conduct a Take Note discussion.
Series sponsored by Miami Valley & Good Samaritan Hospitals. Victory Wholesale Group, Inc. is supporting sponsor of Saturday evening’s concert.
Tickets $12 – $62.
For photographs of Neal Gittleman or any of the various series’ guest artists, go to:
http://www.daytonphilharmonic.com/08-09/mediaaccess