Columbus Symphony Opens 2017-18 with AN ALPINE SYMPHONY

CSO Music Director Rossen Milanov will lead the Columbus Symphony in a performance of two of the world's most iconic symphonic landscapes-Respighi's The Pines of Rome and Strauss' An Alpine Symphony. Brass players from the OSU School of Music will join the Columbus Symphony for The Pines of Rome, and An Alpine Symphony will feature a photographic essay of the Swiss Alps by local photographer Stephen Pariser projected on a 40-foot screen above the orchestra.

The Columbus Symphony presents An Alpine Symphony at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.) on Friday and Saturday, September 22 and 23, at 8pm. Tickets start at $10 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 CAPA Ticket Center will also be open two hours prior to each performance.

Prelude - Patrons are invited to join Christopher Purdy and CSO Music Director Rossen Milanov in the theatre at 7pm for a 30-minute, pre-concert discussion about the works to be performed.

About CSO Music Director Rossen Milanov

Respected and admired by audiences and musicians alike, Rossen Milanov is currently the Music Director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, Princeton Symphony Orchestra, and the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias in Spain.

Milanov has established himself as a conductor with considerable national and international presence. He has appeared with the symphonies of Colorado, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Seattle, and Fort Worth, as well as the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall "Link Up" education projects with Chicago's Orchestra of St. Luke's and Civic Orchestra.

Internationally, Milanov has collaborated with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra de la Suisse Romand, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Aalborg, Latvian, and Hungarian National Symphony Orchestras. He has also conducted orchestras in Toronto, Vancouver, Mexico, Colombia, Sao Paolo, Belo Horizonte, New Zealand, and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic in South Africa. In the Far East, he has appeared with the symphonies of NHK, Sapporo, Tokyo, and Singapore, the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

Milanov has collaborated with some of the world's preeminent artists, including Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Midori, Christian Tetzlaff, and André Watts. During his 11-year tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra, he conducted more than 200 performances. In 2015, he completed a 15-year tenure as Music Director of the nationally recognized training orchestra Symphony in C in New Jersey. In 2013, he completed a 17-year tenure with the New Symphony Orchestra in his native city of Sofia, Bulgaria. His passion for new music has resulted in numerous world premieres of works by composers such as Derek Bermel, Richard Danielpour, Nicolas Maw, and Gabriel Prokofiev among others.

Noted for his versatility, Milanov is also a welcome presence in the worlds of opera and ballet. Most recently, he collaborated with Komische Oper Berlin (Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtzensk), Opera Oviedo (Spanish premiere of Tchaikovsky's Mazzepa and Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle that was awarded best Spanish production for 2015), and Opera Columbus (Verdi's La Traviata).

An experienced ballet conductor, he has been seen at New York City Ballet and collaborated with some of the best-known choreographers of our time such as Mats Ek, Benjamin Millepied, and most recently, Alexei Ratmansky in the critically acclaimed revival of Swan Lake in Zurich with the Zurich Ballet and in Paris with the La Scala Ballet.

Milanov studied conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School where he received the Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship.

About composer Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

Respighi was an Italian violinist, composer, and musicologist best known for his three orchestral tone poems-The Fountains of Rome (1916), The Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928). The Pines of Rome is a suite of four movements, each depicting pine trees located in different areas of the city of Rome at different times of the day. Pines of the Villa Borghese (Movement 1) portrays children playing by the pine trees in the Villa Borghese gardens, dancing the Italian equivalent of the nursery rhyme "Ring a Ring o' Roses" and "mimicking marching soldiers and battles; twittering and shrieking like swallows." The Pines Near a Catacomb (Movement 2) depicts The Shadows of pine trees that overhang the entrance of a catacomb, conjuring the picture of a solitary chapel in the deserted Campagna. The Pines of the Janiculum (Movement 3) portrays the full moon shining on the pines that grow on the hill of the temple of Janus, the double-faced god of doors, gates, and the new year. The Pines of the Appian Way (Movement 4) recalls the past glories of the Roman republic in a representation of dawn on the great military road leading into Rome.

About composer Richard Georg Strauss (1864-1949)

Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras known for his operas, Lieder, tone poems, and other instrumental works. He was also a prominent conductor in Western Europe and the Americas, enjoying quasi-celebrity status as his compositions became standards of orchestral and operatic repertoire. Written in 1915, An Alpine Symphony forgoes the conventions of a traditional multi-movement symphony, consisting of 22 continuous sections of music that depict the experience of 11 hours (from daybreak to nightfall) spent climbing an Alpine mountain.

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