Two marches by Gioachino Rossini will be performed outside of Russia for the first time Oct. 17 when the UGA Wind Ensemble presents “Land of White Nights: Music of the Tsars and Beyond.” The concert, part of the Hugh Hodgson School of Music’s Second Thursday Scholarship Series, will take place at 8 p.m. in the Hodgson Concert Hall.
Tickets are $18 for the public and $5 for students. For tickets, call 706-542-4400 or see pac.uga.edu.
George Foreman, director of the UGA Performing Arts Center, discovered the compositions last summer while on a research trip to St. Petersburg. Composed in honor of Czar Nicholas I in 1834, the marches likely only have been performed once.
“These works were never published, and have simply sat in a library for the past 180 or so years,” said John P. Lynch, director of the Wind Ensemble and a professor at the Hodgson School. “When George returned this summer with me and my graduate students, we literally spent several days poring over scores in a dusty attic room.”
In addition to the lost marches, the Wind Ensemble also will premiere Eudoxie de Bologovsky’s “Marche Tactique,” John Mackey’s “The Frozen Cathedral” and a new setting of the Coronation Scene from Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov.”