The Grand Strand’s own Long Bay Symphony returns with yet another beautifully structured season of beloved masterpieces. This season’s Masterworks Series, Moving Forward, Looking Back, will include the following performances:
Opposite Ends of the Spectrum: Strings, Percussion and Beyond
Featuring oboist James Austin Smith
Sunday, September 26, 2021
String instruments, with their technical versatility and homogeneous blend of sound, are the backbone of the orchestra. This program highlights the strings’ idiomatic lushness, as well as their rhythmic and percussive qualities. Starburst by Jessie Montgomery, one of the current music scene’s most prominent composers, represents a fresh, new voice blending vernacular and improvisatory elements within a traditional idiom, while Stravinsky’s Concerto in D is a string orchestra showpiece full of the rhythmic energy and clarity of the composer’s neo-classic period. The Oboe Concerto by Ralph Vaughan Williams features rich string sonorities, in an ideal pairing of the composer’s English folk idiom with the pastoral sound of the oboe. And, Bizet’s famous opera, Carmen, is colorfully re-imagined by contemporary Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin as a brilliant tour de force for strings and a large battery of percussion instruments.
Classical Masters
Featuring ECU Piano Competition Winner Anna Bray
Sunday, November 7, 2021
The three iconic composers who were architects of the mature Classical style are featured in this program of great masterpieces. Franz Joseph Haydn’s Overture in D sparkles with the characteristic energy and tuneful invention of the great Viennese School, while Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s popular Piano Concerto No. 21 in C, with its graceful melodies and brilliant fanfares, demonstrates the ideal Classical dialog between soloist and orchestra. Then, the ground-breaking Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) by Ludwig van Beethoven exhibits the bold advances in harmony, form, instrumentation and emotion that mark the composer’s mature style.
The Romantic Legacy: from Rossini to Ravel
Featuring violinist Benjamin Baker
Sunday, January 30, 2022
The Romantic Era, initiated by the intensity of Beethoven’s style and lasting well into the 20th century, produced the most emotional, passionate and widely beloved classical music of all time. From the light-hearted, comic spirit in Gioachino Rossini’s overture to the opera Cinderella, the strong, folk-based nationalism of the “Czech” Suite by Antonin Dvorák, the flashy soloistic virtuosity displayed in Camille Saint-Saëns’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso and Pablo de Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, to the lush, impressionistic late French Romanticism of Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, and even the bold 20th-century American neo-Romantic style in Elegy by John Corigliano, this program will inspire listeners with the wide dramatic breadth of Romanticism .
A Melancholy Beauty: Special Presentation in Conjunction with Violins of Hope & Varna International’s Songs of Life,
Featuring the Carolina Master Chorale, the Bulgarian National Vocal Ensemble, and vocal soloists
Sunday, April 24, 2022
A once-in-a-lifetime symphonic and vocal event, as part of the Violins of Hope and Songs of Life month-long Holocaust remembrances throughout South Carolina. A Melancholy Beauty, an oratorio by Georgi Andreev, tells the story of valiant Bulgarians during World War II who defied Nazi deportations and saved their 49,000 Jewish citizens from the Holocaust. String instruments that were played by Jewish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps have been recovered and restored by Violins of Hope; they make a special appearance in this concert, being played by members of the orchestra.
Special ticket pricing: $75, $65, $55, and $35.
Masterworks Series ticket prices for season subscribers range from $180 to $220, while single ticket prices range from $25 to $55.
One Vision: The Music of Queen
Featuring the rock band from Jeans n Classics
Saturday, March 26, 2022
Join the Long Bay Symphony in a celebration of the unforgettable music of Queen.