The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will perform Oct. 7 at 3 p.m. in Hodgson Concert Hall of the Performing Arts Center. Tickets, $37 and $42, are half price for UGA students.
Robert Spano, music director, will conduct the Grammy Award-winning ASO in a program showcasing two great romantic composers of the 19th century. The concert will feature the dramatic Romeo and Juliet symphony by Hector Berlioz and Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with guest pianist Garrick Ohlsson.
Spano is among the most innovative and imaginative conductors of his generation. Now in his seventh season as music director of the ASO, he has enriched its repertoire and elevated it to greater prominence. He has conducted many of the major orchestras of North America, including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco.
Among the orchestras he has led internationally are the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, Czech Philharmonic, Berlin Radio Sinfonie Orchestra, BBC Scottish and BBC Symphony Orchestras, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the United Kingdom, New Japan Philharmonic and Oslo Philharmonic. Spano is on the faculty of Oberlin Conservatory and has received honorary doctorates from Bowling Green State University and the Curtis Institute of Music.
Internationally acclaimed pianist Garrick Ohlsson has long been regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Chopin. Although he won first prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition in Italy and 1968 Montréal Piano Competition, it was his 1970 triumph at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, where he won the gold medal, that brought him worldwide recognition as one of the finest pianists of his generation. Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, Mich.
A pre-concert lecture will be given at 2:15 p.m. by Thomas Dickey, a music student at UGA. The lecture is free and open to the public.
