MUSIC: Manchester Symphony concert honors master composers

Journal Inquirer
February 10, 2022

Solomiya Ivakhiv

The Manchester Symphony Orchestra presents an Orchestral Masterworks concert of music from the 19th-century Romantic era Saturday, Feb. 12, at 7:30 p.m. at the Manchester High School Bailey Auditorium, 134 East Middle Turnpike, Manchester.

Music director Luca Antonucci will lead the orchestra in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, composed for Ferdinand David, Mendelssohn’s orchestra’s concertmaster. The two had become friends as teenagers.

Also on the program is Mendelssohn’s Overture for Winds, a rearrangement of the Nocturno he wrote when he was 15 for a smaller ensemble while visiting the Baltic seaside town of Bad Doberan.

The program concludes with Schubert’s Eighth Symphony — the Unfinished. In this symphony, Schubert’s lyrical melodies are punctuated by ominous chords and dramatic pauses. After only two movements, the music ends on ascending harmonious chords. The world will never know whether Schubert would have chosen to end his symphony with the ominous or the harmonious.

The soloist for Saturday’s concert, Ukrainian-born Solomiya Ivakhiv, has performed with leading orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the world. Her numerous recordings include a solo album that was featured in the Top 5 New Classical Releases on the iTunes billboard.

Ivakhiv is a professor of music at the University of Connecticut.

Tickets are $18; $15 for seniors; and free for youths 17 and younger, students of any age, and military personnel, and will be sold at the door (cash or check only).

Ticketholders may attend a free, pre-concert talk in the auditorium at 6:30 p.m.

For information, call 860-646-0047, e-mail info(at)msoc.org, or visit the Manchester Symphony Orchestra and Chorale on its Facebook page or at its website: msoc.org