Welcome to our 2010-11 season "Windows to the Soul"

• Dear Fellow Music Lovers,

   “Windows to the Soul,’ Waterbury Symphony’s 2010-11 Season will prove to be one of our best and literally far reaching  - so make sure you join us for the entire adventure because I would not want you to miss a single moment.  

  We start off with one of the most beloved of composers, Peter Liyich Tchaikovsky.  Two young “virtuosos in the making” are featured in the heroic First Piano Concerto and the lyric Violin Concerto.  The iconic 1812 Overture makes a perfect cap to an evening featuring one of the giants of all Russian composers.

  The Waterbury Symphony’s performances of the greatest oratorio ever written will include singers from the Yale Opera – Handel’s “Messiah” will also be the WSO’s first complete performance of “the greatest story ever told”  in many years.

  Five has long been a magical number in music. CPE Bach and Mozart figure in, but nothing is more sonorously synonymous than Beethoven and his fist clenching 5th!   Come and experience that most gripping of works that also became the Allies’ encoded dot-dot-dot-dash for victory.

   

  Soar into space for a unique view of our “Fantastic Planet” as you enjoy images of Earth: from violent storms and volcanoes to the wild west, lush forests, and frozen polar caps to images from outerspace. A fast paced eclectic mix of music from Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring,"  to Williams "Serenade to Music,” and  John Williams "The Cowboys," and others will lead you on this cosmic trip of a lifetime!

   

  Rachmaninoff’s monumental 3rd piano concerto is so rich in melody and sumptuous harmony that it practically made Hollywood blush in the 1940’s. Gabrielli’s music for the Cathedral of St. Mark will be performed much as it was 400 years ago – antiphonally surrounding the audience and makes the perfect liturgical bookend with Respighi’s radiant and rarely performed “Church Windows”.

   

  Music gives voice to the spirit, lightens the heart, joins and connects us as friends, a community and as humankind on Earth. Whether it be the sounds we hear as we look into our souls, reflect on maters of the spirit, or gaze into the night sky, music is the key and the door is already open.  Please come in. 

   

  Leif Bjaland
• Music Director and Conductor