The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra’s 2017-2018 will open their season with a special masterworks concert at the Moss Arts Center on Oct. 15 at 3 p.m.
The performance will be held in the center’s Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre, located within the Street and Davis Performance Hall at 190 Alumni Mall.
Under the direction of David Stewart Wiley, Roanoke Symphony Orchestra music director and conductor, the orchestra will perform works from composers Beethoven and Brahms for the afternoon concert, which includes an appearance by guest pianist Jeffrey Biegel.
Biegel joins the orchestra for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” in E Minor, Op. 73, while the second half of the evening features Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in E Minor.
A pianist, recording artist, composer and arranger, Biegel’s career has been marked by bold, creative achievements. In the late 1990s, he initiated the first live internet recitals in New York and Amsterdam and assembled a consortium of more than 25 orchestras to celebrate the millennium with the premiere of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s “Millennium Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra.”
He has played premieres of new works and arrangements with the Boston Pops, New York Pops, the American Symphony Orchestra, the Eastern Music Festival Orchestra, as well as the symphony orchestras of Minnesota, Indianapolis, and Harrisburg, among others.
In August, Biegel recorded Kenneth Fuchs’s Piano Concerto, “Spiritualist,” with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. He also performed the world premiere of a new Concerto for Piano and Orchestra composed by Italian pianist and composer Giovanni Allevi with Orchestra Kentucky, conducted by Jeff Reed.
This performance is supported in part by a gift from Mike and Candi Kelly.
Prior to the performance, patrons can enjoy classical piano works performed by Virginia Tech music students in the Moss Arts Center Grand Lobby.
Tickets for the performance are $25-55 for general public and $10 for students and youth 18 and under. Tickets can be purchased online; at the Moss Arts Center’s box office, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday; or by calling 540-231-5300 during box office hours.
