Waterbury Symphony - Picture This!

On Saturday, April 23 at 8:00 PM, the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra’s final concert of its 78th season begins on the stage of Naugatuck Valley Community College’s Fine Arts Center with one of the best-known works in the piano literature - Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, played by Claire Huangci – a young pianist with a reputation for eclecticism and virtuosity that’s anything but traditional. It concludes with a unique interpretation of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition illustrated by more than 700 projected images of the historical, cultural, and social story of Greater Waterbury and the Naugatuck Valley, as submitted by the individuals, institutions, and corporations of the community. The multimedia performance, brainchild of WSO Music Director and Conductor Leif Bjaland, blends Mussorgsky’s vision of a stroll through an art gallery, with a tour of our own past and present.

Claire Huangci, will play what is perhaps Rachmaninoff’s best-known concerto, has emerged as a widely-acclaimed artist, leaving behind her role of the acclaimed prodigy who played a private concert for President Bill Clinton at the age of ten. The pianist says she sees her mission in “making music that people will remember, not because I have nimble fingers but because the music was so beautiful – so beautiful, in fact, that it moved them to tears.”

Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, originally composed in 1874 as piece for piano was inspired by a posthumous exhibit of watercolors and drawings by the composer’s friend, Victor Hartmann. The piece came easily to Mussorgsky, who wrote, “Ideas, melodies, come to me of their own accord…I can hardly manage to put it all down on paper fast enough.” In 1922, Maurice Ravel orchestrated the work on encouragement from conductor Serge Koussevitzky.

The Waterbury Symphony Orchestra and Webster Bank invite friends and patrons to attend a special End-of-Season Reception at 6:00 pm in the NVCC Technology Hall Dining Room, celebrating the conclusion of the Symphony’s 78th Season and the Picture Waterbury Project, which gathered well over 1,000 images for the performance. Tickets for the Reception which will include Maestro Bjaland’s observations on the Project are $40 and may be purchased on the WSO’s website, www.waterburysymphony.org. At 7:00 pm, scientist and musicologist Vincent de Luise will give a free lecture in the NVCC’s Mainstage Theatre on the phenomenon of Synesthesia - the perception of sensory input in unconventional ways, such as “hearing” visual art or “seeing” music - as suggested by the evening’s special performance.

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