Following a busy October that included performances at the Nobel Conference, Family Weekend and a joint concert with the orchestra at Buffalo High School, the Gustavus Symphony Orchestra and Conductor Ruth Lin will present its fall concert in Jussi Björling Recital Hall on Saturday, November 7 at 1:30 p.m. For this performance, the symphony will welcome guest violinist Jill Olson Moser to the stage. Saturday’s concert is open to the public and admission is free.
The Gustavus Symphony will present two major works on Saturday’s concert. The performance will open with the three-movement Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 by Felix Mendelssohn, featuring Jill Olson Moser, adjunct instructor of music at Gustavus, as violin soloist. This concerto was Mendelssohn’s last major work and may be his most popular and recognized works. The Gustavus audience may remember the performance of this concerto in Christ Chapel by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra with violinist Pinchas Zukerman.
The second half of the concert will be Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64. It was premiered in 1888 in St. Petersburg, Russia, with Tchaikovsky conducting. Although the composer/conductor was not too confident in the quality of the work after a ten-year hiatus from composing, he came to appreciate it after hearing that his friend and fellow composer Johannes Brahms liked it. The Symphony No. 5 was to become one of the defining works of Tchaikovsky’s career and also one of the most well known.
Guest artist, violinist Jill Olson Moser is a native of Lincoln, Nebraska, and a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. Her primary teachers included Dr. Robert Emile, Catherine Tait and Jorja Fleezanis. Jill works extensively as an orchestral and chamber musician in the Twin Cities, performs with the Minnesota Opera and is a regular substitute with the Minnesota Orchestra. Prior to moving to the Twin Cities, Jill was the Concertmaster of the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony and the Fargo-Moorhead Opera Orchestra. She was also a member of the Britt Festival and Wintergreen Performing Arts Orchestras in Oregon and Virginia respectively, as well as the Heidelberg Schlossfestspiele in Germany. In addition to her work in the Department of Music at Gustavus, Jill has an active Suzuki studio and teaches at St. Thomas.
Saturday’s fall concert by the Gustavus Symphony Orchestra, with Conductor Ruth Lin and Violinst Jill Olson Moser, will begin at 1:30 p.m. in Björling Recital Hall. Tickets are not required for this performance. Admission is free.
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