The Cal Poly Symphony’s Winter Concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 15, in the Performing Arts Center will showcase student soloist winners and Respighi’s symphonic poem, “Pines of Rome.”
The student soloists were winners of the symphony’s Solo Competition in November: four instrumentalists, a pair of vocalists and one composer.
The instrumentalists are mechanical engineering major Apollo Wong, piano, who will play Johann Sebastian Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D Minor, BWV 1052; marine sciences major Sophia Catania, who will play Cécile Chaminade’s “Concertino for Flute and Orchestra,” Op. 107; music major Erik Petrovich, who will play two movements from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Suite for Viola and Orchestra”; and music major Rose Candelaria, who will play the first movement of Dmitry Kabalevsky’s “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.”
The vocalists are Amethyst Shanks, who will sing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Ah, se in ciel, benigne stelle”; and Helena Fuller, who will sing Gustave Charpentier’s “Depuis le jour” from his opera “Louise.” Both are sopranos and music majors.
The orchestra will also perform “As the Seasons Change” by student composer and music major Edwin Muñoz.
Ottorino Respighi’s symphonic poem, “Pines of Rome” will conclude the concert. First performed in 1924, this work depicts four settings in Rome featuring pine trees: pines in the Villa Borghese gardens, near a catacomb, on the Janiculum Hill and lining the Appian Way. Respighi uses these settings to evoke everything from children playing to legions of soldiers returning triumphant to the capitol of the Roman Empire. He represents the song of a nightingale — both orchestrally and with an early recording of an actual nightingale — the sound of hymns emerging from catacombs, and the unstoppable marching of feet in an orchestral tour de force.
The symphony is directed by music Professor David Arrivée.
