The WVU Symphony Orchestra will perform Beethoven’s famous “Symphony No. 9 in D Minor,” at the Creative Arts Center during its spring concert on Thursday, April 22.

The event begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Lyell B. Clay Concert Theatre.

The orchestra will be joined by the combined WVU choirs and vocal soloists Hope Koehler, Mandy Spivak, Nicholas Perna and William Koehler, all WVU music faculty members.

WVU Director of Orchestral Activities, Maestro Mitchell Arnold, will lead the performance. Choral preparation is under the direction of Jeffry Blake Johnson.

“No other orchestral work has such stature within the music world and our culture at large as Beethoven’s Ninth. It is a monumental, ground-breaking piece of music that has the power to enthrall and uplift,” said Arnold.

“It is capable of breathing fire, soothing with great tenderness; it can depict earth-shaking cataclysm and pastoral beauty. Ultimately, it is Beethoven offering to the world a path towards utopia, using the gift of art, of music.”

Arnold also described the concert as an exciting collaborative effort between the choral, vocal and instrumental areas of the WVU division of music.

“All our musicians look upon this work as a privilege to perform and share with the Morgantown community,” he said.

Jerry McGonigle, WVU professor of acting and directing, will join the orchestra and choirs for a brief reading from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” to precede the first work on the concert, Berlioz’s “Marche Fun�bre.”

According to Arnold, this brief and profoundly moving work was intended to accompany the last scene of a production of “Hamlet” that went unrealized.

For concert tickets and information, call the WVU Box Office at 304-293-SHOW.

-WVU-

04/20/10

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4841 ext. 3108, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

Follow @wvutoday on Twitter.