CSO to Open Southern Theatre Season with 'Suites & Songs' Program

CSO Music Director Jean-Marie Zeitouni will conduct the CSO's first performances in the Southern Theatre for the 2013-14 season, opening with the Suites & Songs program featuring guest mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer and works from Respigh, Ravel, and Peter Liberson. Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin composition pays graceful homage to François Couperin and the other composers of eighteenth-century France. The CSO will also perform two additional movements from the original piano suite orchestrated by Jean-Marie. Ottorino Respighi's sparkling suite Trittico Botticelliano portrays the delightful paintings of Italian master Sandro Botticelli. Audiences will also enjoy Peter Lieberson's gorgeous musical love letters derived from the sonnets of Nobel prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in Neruda Songs, featuring Kim Harrison Hopcraft as narrator.

The Columbus Symphony presents Suites & Songs at the Southern Theatre (21 E. Main St.) on Friday, October 18, at 8pm; Saturday, October 19, at 8pm; Sunday, October 20, at 3pm. Tickets start at $25 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 PNC Arts Alive All Access tickets while available. For more information, visit www.GoFor5.com.

The 2013-14 Masterworks Series is made possible through the generous support of season sponsors Anne and Noel Melvin.

About CSO Music Director Jean-Marie Zeitouni

Jean-Marie Zeitouni, music director of the Columbus Symphony and principal conductor and artistic director of I Musici de Montréal, has emerged as one of Canada's brightest young conductors whose eloquent yet fiery style results in regular re-engagements across North America. Also enjoying an association with Les Violons du Roy that goes back many years, first as conductor-in-residence, then as associate conductor, and since 2008, as principal guest conductor, 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 album with Les Violons du Roy entitled Piazzoll; a which received a 2007 JUNO Award for Classical Album of the Year in the category Solo or Chamber Ensemble. They also have two subsequent recordings-Bartok (2008) and Britten (2010).

About guest mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer

Expert at all music genres from the Baroque era to contemporary work, mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer has performed with American Bach Soloists, New York Collegium, Early Music New York, the Rebel Ensemble, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the Boston Pops and has given world premieres of music by John Zorn, Nico Muhly, Bernard Rands, Elliot Carter, and the Bang on a Can artists. Her recent performance in the multi-media opera premiere at The Kitchen in Missy Mazzoli's Song from the Uproar, composed for her and the NOW Ensemble, prompted reviewers to hail her as "riveting" (New York Times), and to remark upon her "throbbing low register and open-hearted performing style" (Wall Street Journal). For her portrayal of Cherubino in the American premiere of Mercadante's I Due Figaro with Amore Opera, critics described her as "delicious" (Opera News) and "nothing short of stunning" (Stage Magazine).

About composer Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

Respighi was an Italian composer, musicologist, and conductor. He is best known for his orchestral music, particularly the three Roman tone poems-Fountains of Rome (Le fontane di Roma), Pines of Rome (I pini di Roma), and Roman Festivals (Feste romane). His musicological interest in 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century music led him to compose pieces based on the music of these periods. Completed in 1927, Trittico Botticelliano consists of three movements inspired by Botticelli paintings in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence-La Primavera, L'Adorazione dei Magi, and La nascita di Venere. The middle movement uses the well-known tune Veni Emmanuel (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel).

About composer Joseph-Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures, and effects. Along with Claude Debussy, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music. Much of his piano music, chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music has entered the standard concert repertoire. Le tombeau de Couperinis a suite for solo piano, composed between 1914 and 1917, in six movements based on those of a traditional Baroque suite. Each movement is dedicated to the memory of a friend of the composer (or in one case, two brothers) who had died fighting in World War I. Ravel also produced an orchestral version of the work in 1919, although this omitted two of the original movements.

About composer Peter Lieberson (1946-2011)

Lieberson was an American composer and son of ballerina and choreographer Vera Zorina (née Eva Brigitta Hartwig) and Goddard Lieberson, president of Columbia Records. TheNeruda Songs are a cycle of five songs composed for mezzo-soprano soloist and orchestra for his wife, singer Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (1954-2006). The cycle is setting of poems by twentieth-century Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda. The piece was co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony with the world premiere performed on May 20, 2005, by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting and Hunt Lieberson as soloist. Peter Lieberson won the 2008 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for this work.

For more information, visit www.columbussymphony.com

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