Bucks County Symphony Orchestra announces fall concert

The Bucks County Symphony Orchestra returns to the concert stage at 8 p.m. on Oct. 23 in Delaware Valley University’s Life Sciences Auditorium for the season premiere of the yearlong celebration of Maestro Gary S. Fagin’s 20 years as music director.
The BCSO will pay tribute to its long-time principal clarinetist, Wendy Osteyee Christensen, who passed away unexpectedly in June. She was a member of the BCSO for 37 years. As a memorial to Christensen, the orchestra will perform Pavane by Gabriel Fauré.
The featured soloist for the concert is Cuban-American cellist Thomas Mesa, who joins the BCSO in a performance of Antonín Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor, composed in 1895. A winner of the First Prize in the 2016 Sphinx Competition and the Astral Artists 2017 National Auditions, Mesa has appeared as soloist at the Supreme Court of the United States and with major American orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra.

The BCSO will open its 69th concert season with the Roman Carnival Overture by Hector Berlioz. Originally composed as the prelude to the second act of his opera, Benvenuto Cellini, this orchestral showpiece is now typically played as a stand-alone work.
The BCSO concludes its fall performance with Paul Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber. Premiered in 1944 by the New York Philharmonic, it is a piece in which the composer takes wide creative license by “spicing up” Weber’s themes.
Tickets can be purchased in Doylestown at Rutherford’s Camera Shop and the Doylestown Bookshop, or online at buckscountysymphony.org. Students are admitted for free. Call 215-348-7321 or visit the Bucks County Symphony Orchestra website for more information.

---

Join our readers whose generous donations are making it possible for you to read our news coverage. Help keep local journalism alive and our community strong. Donate today.