- No, not Bach, Beethoven or Brahms. For their fourth program of the season, entitled "The Other 3 B's", KSO Music Director and Conductor Geoffrey Gallegos has programed the music of Barber, Bielawa and Bartok!
The centerpiece of the program will be the world premiere performance of Feedback for Organ and Orchestra written by distinguished local composer, professor of composition, and pianist Herbert Bielawa, and featuring keyboardist extraordinaire (and Mr. Bielewa's wife) Sandra Soderlund as organ soloist. Originally composed for two organs, Mr. Bielewa remarks: "this revised version of Feedback was created as a colorful, spirited, playful, and virtuosic piece with elements of jazz and snippets, throughout, from the famous Toccata and Fugue in d minor by Bach. The title refers to the process of feeding fragments of the Toccata and Fugue back into a work composed by me in 1996." Feedback will take full advantage of UUCB's magnificent Aeolian Skinner Pipe Organ.
The concert will open with Samuel Barber's majestic Second Essay for Orchestra. Commissioned and premiered by Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic in 1942, this single movement work, while without program, is none the less a highly expressive comment on WWII, with the attendant anxiety, brutality and melancholy but concluding on an exhilarating note of hope.
After intermission, well known local pianist, frequent soloist, and favorite KSO collaborator Daniel Glover will join the orchestra in a performance of the spiritually cheerful, transcendentally intimate, and always brilliant Piano Concerto No. 3 by Bela Bartok.
Please join us for this new and exciting extravaganza of keyboard and orchestral virtuosity!