BERLIN — The Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra concludes its 2021-2022 season in April with a program featuring Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major, with Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Principal Clarinet Yao Guang Zhai as guest soloist.
The concert also includes Weber’s Overture to Euryanthe and Brahms’ Symphony No. 2.
“We bring our 24th season to its finale with some of the most uplifting, energetic and rousing of the classical and romantic repertoire,” said Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Music Director Julien Benichou. “We are particularly pleased to have Yao Guang Zhai join us for the Clarinet Concerto, one of Mozart’s most haunting and technically challenging compositions.”
The concert will be presented on Friday, April 22 at 7 p.m. at Easton High School in Easton; on Saturday, April 23 12 at 7 p.m. at Cape Henlopen High School in Lewes, Del.; and on Sunday, April 24 at 7 p.m. at the Performing Arts Center in Ocean City.
Individual tickets are $50. In addition, a limited number of free tickets are available for students 18 years and under, with accompanying parents admitted for $10 each. Reservations are required for the free tickets, and may be made by calling 888-846-8600 or visit www.midatlanticsymphony.org. To ensure the safety of its audience members and musicians, the Orchestra requires proof of COVID-19 vaccination for everyone entering venues.
German composer Carl Maria von Weber, best known for his operatic works, created Euryanthe between 1817 and 1823. Although the full opera is seldom performed today, the Overture is celebrated as an outstanding example of the early German Romantic style. It features themes that appear throughout what Weber described as a “grand heroic-romantic opera”.
Johannes Brahms composed his Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73 in the summer of 1877, remarkably quick work given the 21 years he labored over his First Symphony. The Second Symphony is one of the most cheerful of his works. Perhaps reflecting its composition while Brahms was living on the shores of a beautiful Austrian lake, the Symphony is sometimes called his “Pastoral”, an obvious reference to the Beethoven symphony with the same name.
The Clarinet Concerto was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s last major instrumental composition before his untimely death at the age of 35. He composed it for the clarinet virtuoso Anton Stadler, a friend and a fellow Freemason. The soloist’s second theme in the first movement explores the entire range of the clarinet.