Princeton University Orchestra Concludes Season With Beethoven, Mahler, Strauss for Mindlin Memorial Concerts
Princeton University Orchestra Concludes Season With Beethoven, Mahler, Strauss for Mindlin Memorial Concerts
For Immediate Release Contact: Ernie Clark
April 1, 2011 eclark@princeton.edu
PRINCETON, New Jersey — The Princeton University Orchestra under Michael Pratt will conclude its 2010-2011 season on Friday April 15 and Saturday April 16 at 8:00 in Richardson Auditorium with an all-Austrian/ German program. Mr. Pratt has chosen three signature works: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, Gustav Mahler’s Five Songs to Poems by Friederich Rückert, and the tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) by Richard Strauss. Soloist in the Mahler will be Barbara Rearick of Princeton’s voice faculty.
Ms. Rearick’s career spans North and South America and Europe in opera, orchestral work, recitals, chamber music and contemporary music. She has appeared with regularity in Great Britain, where she has worked at the Aldeburgh Festival, with the City Of Birmingham Orchestra, and at London’s Wigmore Hall. She is also a frequent performer in Princeton with the Richardson Chamber Players. This is her third appearance with Michael Pratt and the Princeton University Orchestra, having sung Hansel and Gretel and Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony previously.
“This program features three towering works that are central in the European canon. Strauss and Mahler owed everything to Beethoven, and much to each other, as they had a wary but high respectful friendship, “ said Pratt. “The Third Leonore Overture has been called the most dramatic fourteen minutes of music ever composed. The five Mahler songs are a smaller-scale masterpiece. Our season-ender is Strauss’s great tone poem after the work by Nietszche, whose opening three notes are probably the best-known motive in all of music, thanks to the Stanley Kubrick film (not to mention the Princeton University Band).”
The concerts are an annual memorial to Stuart B. Mindlin, a Princeton community member who was a member of the Orchestra for many years until his death in 1989. His family has established a fund for the Orchestra in his name.
Tickets for the concerts are $15 (general), $13 (seniors), $8 (students). Call 609-258-9220 or order online at www.princeton.edu/utickets.
