Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Music Director Manfred Honeck will lead the the orchestra for the first time at West Virginia University in a concert of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s music featuring famed violinist Serge Zimmermann.

The concert will be at 2 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 13, at WVU’s Creative Arts Center.

The concert is part of WVU’s Canady Symphony Series. The 2010-2011 title sponsors of the Canady Symphony Series at WVU are William and Loulie Canady in memory of their daughter Valerie. The series sponsor is BB&T.

Tickets start at $39 and can be purchased by calling 800-743-8560 or visiting the website, Pittsburghsymphony.org/wvu. Tickets will also be available at the door the afternoon of the concert. Students calling for discounted tickets should call 412-392-4819.

WVU student tickets have been reduced to $7 when purchased in advance or $9 at the door (with WVU student ID), thanks to the generous underwriting of William and Loulie Canady. Availability of reduced tickets is limited.

The program features Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, and Symphony No. 5, and is the finale of a two-week-long festival of concerts, lectures, film screenings and recitals in Pittsburgh celebrating the Russian composer’s works.

Manfred Honeck was appointed the ninth music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in January 2007 and began his tenure at the start of the 2008-2009 season. Also beginning in Sept. 2008, he became the principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in Prague, and in 2007, assumed the post of music director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart.

He was born in Austria and studied music at the Academy of Music in Vienna. An accomplished violinist and violist, he spent more than 10 years as a member of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra.

After critically acclaimed concerts at Carnegie Hall and during the European Tour in 2010 with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Honeck and the orchestra will tour Europe again in August and September.

Honeck commenced his conducting career as assistant to Claudio Abbado at the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in Vienna. Subsequently, he was engaged by the Zurich Opera House from 1991-1996, where he was awarded the prestigious European Conductor’s Award in 1993. In 1996, Honeck began a three-year stint as one of three main conductors of the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, and in 1997, he served as music director at the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo for a year.

Serge Zimmermann was born in 1991 in Cologne, Germany, into a family of musicians. He received his first violin lessons from his mother at age 5. His musicianship developed rapidly and, a few years later, in 2000, he made his orchestral debut with a violin concerto by Mozart.

Since then, he has performed with a number of renowned orchestras such as Philharmonia
Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra della RAI Torino, Orquesta Sinfonica
de Barcelona, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Bamberg Symphony. In December 2005 the young artist gave his first recital in Essen. After his much-acclaimed German performances of the violin concertos of Bruch and Mendelssohn the press hailed him as ”?a sheer miracle?” and “a violinist of whom the world is going to hear a lot…,” saying ”... even the members of the orchestra rejoiced.”

-WVU-

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

Ramesh Santanam, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
412.392.4827, rsantanam@pittsburghsymphony.org

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