CSO Opens Regular 2012-13 Concert Season with TCHAIKOVSKY & SCHUBERT, 10/12

The Columbus Symphony, CSO Music Director Jean-Marie Zeitouni, and guest pianist Nareh Arghamanyan will perform the first 2012-13 regular season concert program, Tchaikovsky & Shubert. From the soaring, folk-flavored themes of Tchaikovsky's beloved Piano Concerto No. 1 to Schubert's expansive and exhilarating final symphony, melody reigns supreme in this enthralling program. Winner of the 2008 Montreal International Music Competition, Armenian-born Nareh Arghamanyan is one of the finest pianists of today's promising young generation and will perform the Tchaikovsky work. The program will also include Glinka's Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla.

The Columbus Symphony presents Tchaikovsky & Schubert at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.) on Friday and Saturday, October 12 and 13, at 8pm daily. Tickets are $25-$65 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 Ohio Theatre Ticket Office will also be open two hours prior to each performance. Students between the ages of 13-19 may purchase $5 PNC Arts Alive All Access tickets while available. For more information, visit www.GoFor5.com.

WOSU's Christopher Purdy will hold a free, pre-concert lecture about the program for ticket holders one hour prior to each performance.

The 2012-13 Masterworks Series performance is made possible through the generous support of Ann and Noel Melvin.

About CSO Music Director Jean-Marie Zeitouni
Jean-Marie Zeitouni, music director of the Columbus Symphony since 2010 and principal conductor and artistic director of I Musici de Montréal since 2011, has emerged as one of Canada's brightest young conductors with an eloquent yet fiery style that results in regular re-engagements across North America. Also principle guest conductor with Les Violons du Roy, he has led the ensemble in more than 200 performances in the province of Québec, across Canada, and in Mexico. In 2006, he recorded his first CD with Les Violons du Roy entitled Piazzolla which received a 2007 JUNO Award for Classical Album of the Year in the category of Solo or Chamber Ensemble. They also recorded two subsequent CDs-Bartok (2008) and Britten (2010). Jean-Marie graduated from the Montreal Conservatory in conducting, percussion, and theory. He studied with Maestro Raffi Armenian.

About guest pianist Nareh Arghamanyan
Nareh Arghamanyan, winner of the 2008 Montreal International Music Competition, belongs to the promising generation of today's fine pianists. She was the youngest student to be admitted to the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where she studied with Heinz Medjimorec. She has won an impressive number of awards including first prize at the 2007 Piano Campus International Competition in Pontoise, and second prize at the 2007 Jose Roca International Competition in Valencia. She also won the 2005 Josef Dichler Piano Competition in Vienna, and was awarded a scholarship from the Herbert von Karajan Foundation the following year.

About composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804–1857)
Glinka was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country, and is often regarded as the father of Russian classical music. His compositions were an important influence on future Russian composers, notably the members of "The Five," who took Glinka's lead and produced a distinctive Russian style of music. He composed Russlan and Ludmila, an opera in five acts, between 1837 and 1842, basing it on the 1820 poem of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. Today, the overture is the best-known music from the work.

About composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer of the Romantic era with a wide-ranging body of work including symphonies, operas, ballets, instrumental and chamber music, and songs. He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker. The Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor was composed between November 1874 and February 1875, and revised in the summer of 1879 and again in December 1888. The first version received heavy criticism from Nikolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky's desired pianist. Rubinstein later repudiated his previous accusations and became a fervent champion of the work. It is one of the most popular of Tchaikovsky's compositions and among the best known of all piano concerti.

About composer Franz Peter Schubert (1797–1828)
In a short lifespan of just nearly 32 years, Schubert was a prolific composer, writing some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. Appreciation of Schubert's music during his lifetime was limited, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. The Symphony No. 9 in C major, known as the Great, is Schubert's final completed symphony.

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