CSO to Showcase Russian Composers TCHAIKOVSKY & PROKOFIEV, 10/23-24

Tchaikovsky's soulful Symphony No. 4 portrays his battle against fate, the cold-hearted power he believed ruled his life. Guest pianist Haochen Zhang, co-winner of the Gold Medal at the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition, will expertly undertake the consummate challenges of the Prokofiev piano concerto, and Maestro Milanov will bring to vivid life the heartless seducer of Strauss' tone poem Don Juan.

The Columbus Symphony presents Tchaikovsky & Prokofiev at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.) on Friday and Saturday, October 23 and 24, 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. Young people between the ages of 13-25 may purchase $5 All Access tickets while available. For more information, visit www.GoFor5.com.

Prelude - Patrons are invited to join Christopher Purdy 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 the new Music Director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, and begins his tenure with transformative and creative ideas for new programming and expanding the orchestra's reach to new audiences.

Recently completing his first season with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra to enthusiastic acclaim, Milanov is also the Music Director of the Princeton Symphony and of the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias (OSPA) in Spain. During the 2015-16 season, he is dedicating the Princeton concert season to the creativity of women, showcasing the compositions of some of the most respected emerging female composers, such as Anna Clyne, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snyder. With OSPA, he celebrates the orchestra's 25th anniversary with 25 new works and premiere performances in Spain. He will also be conducting a new production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" at the Zurich Opera.

In 2015, he completed a 15-year tenure as Music Director of the nationally recognized training orchestra, Symphony in C, in New Jersey.

His recent season highlights include appearances with the Colorado, Detroit, Milwaukee, Vancouver, Fort Worth, Aalborg, and Latvian National Symphony Orchestras, as well as the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Zurich Opera, Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra, and his Link Up education projects with Carnegie Hall and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. He also appeared with Opera Oviedo in Spain, Hungarian National Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, New York City Ballet, Pacific Symphony, and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in Philadelphia's Verizon Hall.

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 as Associate Conductor and as Artistic Director of the orchestra's summer home at The Mann Center for the Performing Arts. His passion for new music has resulted in numerous world premieres of works by composers such as Richard Danielpour, Nicolas Maw, and Gabriel Prokofiev.

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

About guest pianist Haochen Zhang

Since his gold medal win at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang has captivated audiences in the US, Europe, and Asia with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination, and spectacular virtuosity. His return to Fort Worth as part of the 2010-11 Cliburn Concert series was lauded by the Dallas Morning News as "the kind of program you'd expect from a seasoned master, served up with dazzling virtuosity where wanted and astonishing sophistication elsewhere" and hailed among the top 10 performances of 2010 by both the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star- Telegram. His Boston debut under the auspices of the Celebrity Series met with high praise by audiences and critics, making the year-end lists as part of the Boston Phoenix's top 10 classical music stories of the year. In 2012, Zhang made his debut at the Piano Festival La Roque

d'Antheron for which he received a rave review from Diapason. In 2013, he made his Munich Philharmonic debut under the baton of Maestro Maazel followed by a sold-out, four-city tour in China. He made his BBC Proms debut in 2014, playing Liszt's First Piano Concerto with the China Philharmonic. haochenzhang.com

About composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

R. 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 throughout Germany and Austria. Strauss represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style. The premiere of Don Juan took place on November 11, 1889, in Weimar, Germany, where Strauss conducted the orchestra of the Weimar Opera. The work, composed when Strauss was only 24 years old, became an international success and established his reputation.

About composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous musical genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. Prokofiev set to work on his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor in 1912, and completed it in 1913, dedicating the work to the memory of his friend Maximilian Schmidthof from the St. Petersburg Conservatory who had committed suicide. Performing as solo pianist, Prokofiev premiered the work on August 23, 1913. The original orchestral score was destroyed in a fire following the Russian Revolution, and Prokofiev reconstructed and considerably revised the concerto in 1923. He premiered this revised version in Paris on May 8, 1924.

About composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer whose works included symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets, chamber music, and a choral setting of the Russian Orthodox Divine Liturgy. Some of these are among the most popular theatrical music in the classical repertoire. Symphony No. 4 in F minor was written between 1877 and 1878, and first performed at a Russian Musical Society concert in Moscow on February 22, 1878. During its composition, Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, that he wanted "very much" to dedicate it to her, and that he would write on it "Dedicated to My Best Friend." Claiming she would find in it "an echo of your most intimate thoughts and emotions," the dedication was an expression of artistic partnership, affirming her as an equal partner in its creation.

www.columbussymphony.com

CALENDAR LISTING

The Columbus Symphony presents TCHAIKOVSKY & PROKOFIEV

Friday & Saturday, October 23 & 24, 8 pm

Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.)

Tchaikovsky's soulful Symphony No. 4 portrays his battle against fate, the cold-hearted power he believed ruled his life. Guest pianist Haochen Zhang, co-winner of the Gold Medal at the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition, will expertly undertake the consummate challenges of the Prokofiev piano concerto, and Maestro Milanov will bring to vivid life the heartless seducer of Strauss' tone poem Don Juan. 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. www.columbussymphony.com

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