Purchase Symphony Performs All Sibelius Concert Feb. 19

Maestro Michael Adelson will conduct the Purchase Symphony Orchestra in an all Sibelius program on February 19 at 8 PM in the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at the box office at 914-251-6200 or online at www.artscenter.org.

The orchestra will perform “Karelia Suite”, Symphony No. 7, and the Violin Concerto featuring Leila-Nassar Fredell, winner of the Purchase Concerto Competition.

The concert theme is Finish Currents. Conductor Adelson describes the composer as enigmatic and granitic.  “Sibelius stands like a colossus over the landscape of Nordic music,” says Adelson.  “From his beginnings as a cultural leader of the move towards Finnish independence, he slowly and painstakingly forges a musical language that is utterly unique.  The concert presents three great works from different periods of his life: the youthful, folkloric “Karelia” suite typifies his early nationalism; Leila Nassar-Fredell, winner of this year’s Purchase Concerto Competition will play the difficult virtuoso Violin Concerto, and the conclusion is Sibelius’s seventh and last symphony, a radical, ultra-concentrated work of white-hot intensity that still exerts a huge influence on many of today’s composers.”

Michael Adelson is a conductor, composer, writer and educator who is on the conducting staff of the New York Philharmonic.  He has conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, and many other ensembles in Europe and America.  Equally at home in the opera house, Mr. Adelson has conducted Scandinavian productions of Turandot, La Boheme, and in Stockholm, the world premiere of Qu Xiao-Song’s Oedipus.