2008 Year in Review

Symphony Makes A Mozart-Beethoven Connection

The turn of the 19th century in Vienna is the focus of the Clinton Symphony Orchestra's concert on Saturday, November 15 in performance at 8 p.m. in the Morrison High School auditorium.

Titled by Music Director and Conductor Brian Dollinger as "The Wolfgang/Ludwig Connection," the program will include compositions by both Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven, two of the leading composers of that era.

The Symphony's program annotator, William Driver of Morrison, has turned up possible evidence that the two musical giants met briefly. If true, Beethoven would have been 16 years old and on a two-week visit to Vienna, and it would have been just a short time before Mozart's death at age 35. Driver's complete notes on the program are available on the Symphony's website.

Both Mozart and Beethoven were noted piano composers and performers of that era, and the program will include Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, featuring Morrison native and Augustana College piano professor Dr. Robert Elfline, who graduated from Morrison High School in 1993.

The program will open with the overture to Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, the story based on the legendary Don Juan, followed by the piano concerto. From Beethoven, the orchestra will perform his Symphony No. 1 in C major, composed only a few years after the possible meeting with Mozart.

The concert is the second in the Symphony's 55th season.

Advance tickets are available at England Music Center in Clinton, Fitzgerald Pharmacy in Morrison and Grummert's Hardware in Sterling, and tickets will be available at the door of the concert. Adult admission is $12, with a $5 ticket for high school and college students. Students through eighth grade are admitted free of charge as part of the Symphony's ongoing interest in music education.

by  Editor, theCity1.com
November 3, 2008