DePauw Symphony Orchestra Performs Sunday at 3 p.m.

September 23, 2002

September 23, 2002, Greencastle, Ind. - The DePauw University Symphony Orchestra performs its first concert of the academic year Sunday, September 29, at 3 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium of DePauw's Performing Arts Center in Greencastle. The event is free and open to the public.

The orchestra, under the direction of Orcenith Smith, will perform Pictures at an Exhibition by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky and arranged by Maurice Ravel, Open the Door by Vermont composer Gwyneth Walker, and Voyagefor string orchestra by John Corigliano.

The program contrasts a well-known piece from the standard orchestral repertoire (the Ravel arrangement of Pictures at an Exhibition) with two lesser-known works of living American composers. Mussorgsky's original piano version of Pictures at an Exhibition was inspired by a memorial exhibition of drawings by his friend Victor Hartmann who passed away suddenly at age 39. Open the Door, by former Oberlin College music faculty member Gwyneth Walker, was given its world premiere in 1991 in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Women's Philharmonic of San Francisco. The composer of Voyage, John Corigliano, is internationally acclaimed for his orchestral, chamber, and opera works, won the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2001, and was a guest artist in the DePauw School of Music in the 1980s.