Pianist Lise de la Salle will help open the Rogue Valley Symphony’s 2018-2019 season with Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto. The orchestra will continue to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth with the Overture to Candide. Zoltan Kodály’s Háry János Suite will round out the program. Concerts will be on Friday, September 28 at 7:30 pm in the SOU Music Recital Hall, 405 S Mountain Ave, Ashland; Saturday, September 29 at 7:30pm in the Craterian Theater at the Collier Center for the Performing Arts, 23 S. Central Ave, Medford; and Sunday, September 30 at 3pm in the Grants Pass Performing Arts Center, 830 NE Ninth St, Grants Pass.

In just a few years, through her international concert appearances and her award-winning Naïve recordings, 29 year-old pianist Lise de la Salle has established a reputation as one of today’s most exciting young artists and as a musician of uncommon sensibility and maturity. Her playing inspired a Washington Post critic to write, “For much of the concert, the audience had to remember to breathe… the exhilaration didn’t let up for a second until her hands came off the keyboard.” De la Salle has 8 albums under her belt. Last season the most recent was released: a Bach-focused disc on Naïve including the Italian Concerto, the Liszt Fantasy & Fugue on the Theme B.A.C.H. and the Bach/Busoni Chaconne.  Her orchestral performances include those with London, Boston, Vienna, San Francisco and Chicago to name but a few.

De la Salle will be performing what Music Director Martin Majkut calls “a very beautiful and cheerful piece.” He added that “the only thing I wish was different about this concerto is that the second movement Intermezzo was longer. I would love for that music to last ten minutes instead of three. It is so gorgeous!” Majkut wanted to start the 51st season in a light-hearted and joyful manner. Bernstein’s rousing Overture to Candide will open the program and then the final piece will be Kodaly’s Háry János Suite which starts with a “sneeze.” Majkut said it is a Hungarian thing- “When you are telling a story and someone sneezes, that is a confirmation that the story is true.” So, Kodály was saying that everything that follows is the truth, or at least true in the mind of the self-proclaimed hero in the story, Háry János.

Conductor Martin Majkut will give a pre-concert talk one hour before each performance.

Concerts:

  • Friday, September 28, SOU Music Recital Hall, Ashland, 7:30pm, Tickets range from $36-$60. Youth (ages 6-22) $15
  • Saturday, September 29, Craterian Theater, Medford, 7:30pm, Tickets range from $15-$53. Youth (ages 6-22) $15
  • Sunday, September 30, Grants Pass Performing Arts Center, Grants Pass, 3pm, Tickets range from $15-$45. Youth (ages 6-22) $15

Tickets can be purchased online at rvsymphony.org or by phone at (541)708-6400 for all performances. Medford concert tickets can also be purchased through the Craterian Theater at craterian.org or (541)779-3000.