The West Virginia University Symphony Orchestra will present its second concert of the season at 7:30 p.m. Friday (Nov. 16) at the Creative Arts Center under the baton of Mitchell Arnold, WVU s acting director of orchestral studies.

The concert will be in the Lyell B. Clay Concert Theatre. It is part of the West Virginia Music Teachers Association State Convention being held at WVU this week (Nov. 15-17).

Featured soloists will be pianists James Miltenberger and Chan Kiat Lim and percussionists George Willis and David Newcomb, all collaborating with the orchestra on Bela BartoksConcerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra.

Miltenberger and Willis are members of the WVU music faculty. Lim is an alumnus of the WVU Division of Music, and Newcomb is a graduate student in percussion.

After we decided to perform the Bartok concerto, the remainder of the program virtually selected itself,Arnold said.I chose works that used or even featured percussion. The concerto brings the percussion soloists to the front of the orchestra along with the two pianos for which Bartok provided some fairly percussive sounds.

The program will open with Joseph HaydnsMilitary Symphony in G Major.Arnold said this work so startled and excited 18th century audiencesin part by its unusual use of clattering percussionthat the concerts had to be stopped so that the movement could be replayed. It became one of the most popular symphonic movements of the time.

After hearing this work, its easy to understand why Haydns music wasand isso intriguing and popular,he said.

Johannes BrahmssAcademic Festival Overturewill be the finale. Brahms had been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Breslau in 1879 and composed this work in response.

The university academics expected the work to be of a seriousness befitting the seriousness of the honorary degree,Arnold said.They must have been surprised when Brahms responded with what he called �€~a very boisterous potpourri of student songs.In fact, they were songs more likely to be heard in beer halls than in a music classroom.

The man the university called the most famous living German composer of serious music showed his mastery, thanks and wry humor by offering an overture of stunning complexity and brilliance while thumbing his nose at academic stodginess.

For tickets, call the WVU Box Office at 304-293-SHOW. For more information, visithttp://wvmta.org.