Andrew Sords "German Masters" at Hylton Performing Arts Center

First appearing with the MSO in 2011, violin virtuoso Andrew Sords returns to Merchant Hall for his third performance, this time showcasing Richard Strauss’s vibrant and youthful Violin Concerto in D Minor. Composed when Strauss was only 17, the concerto may be less frequently performed than his later tone poems and operas, but it remains a captivating showcase of late-Romantic virtuosity and artistic promise. The concert opens with Leopold Stokowski’s dramatic orchestral arrangement of J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, made famous by Disney’s Fantasia. Inspired by a walking tour through the ruins of Holyrood Chapel in Edinburgh, Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 in A Minor (“Scottish”) brings the program — and the MSO’s season — to an exuberant close.