Welcome to the Prince George's Philharmonic 2011-12 Season

Our season opens in October with an all-Beethoven program featuring the rarely-performed  King Stephan Overture and the beloved Pastoral Symphony. We welcome Rita Sloan, of the University of Maryland Piano faculty and the Aspen Ensemble, in her Philharmonic debut as guest artist for Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto.

November's Sunday matinee performance spotlights the development of late Romantic German composition from Schumann, on through Wagner, to the tone poems of Richard Strauss.

February features French and French-influenced music, as approximately 20 of Prince George’s County’s outstanding high school musicians augment the orchestra's ranks for our annual side-by-side performance. Violinist Emil Chudnovsky will solo in Henryk Wieniawski’s Second Violin Concerto. The program concludes with an utterly extravagant symphonic work, Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.

In the last concerts of our season, we will welcome back two old friends: cellist Anthony Elliott and pianist Awadagin Pratt. In March, Mr. Elliott performs Serge Prokofiev’s Symphony Concertante for Cello and Orchestra, a work which was dedicated to former National Symphony Music Director, Mtsislav Rostropovich. We will also perform the least frequently heard of the Brahms’ Symphonies, the Third.

Our season finale in May begins with a program of popular music of the 1920's, including Mr. Pratt's performance of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. It closes with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10, a stirring affirmation of an individual's power to resist and ultimately overcome Soviet political oppression.

We thank you for your support and welcome your company for what promises to be an exciting and adventurous 2011-12 concert season.

Sincerely,

Charles Ellis
Music Director, Prince George’s Philharmonic