October 3, 2009  Viva L’Italia!”
Franco Pomponi, baritone and Christine Arand, soprano

This concert featured world-renowned opera stars, baritone Franco Pomponi, and his wife Christine Arand, soprano.  Franco made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2008 as the baritone soloist in Mahler’s 8th Symphony.  Christine was given a Fellowship to the Juilliard Opera Center, which started her career.  Together they performed favorite opera arias and duets of Italian composers such as Rossini, Puccini and Verdi, as well as popular Italian love songs.  The orchestra also performed Respighi’s magnificent Pines of Rome.  The entire evening thrilled the largest ever audience to the Kenosha Symphony.

Picture taken by Mikasi Photography.

December 12, 2009  “Holiday Spectacular”
Gregory Berg, storyteller, Rita Gentile, soprano
Visit from Santa Claus

This 4 p.m. matinee concert will be a family holiday celebration featuring festive seasonal favorites, such as Tchaikovsky’s March from The Nutcracker, Hans Frederic Hepler’s Christmas is for Children, and Clydesdale’s arrangement of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.  Rutter Brother Henrich’s Christmas:  A Musical Fable, will be performed by the orchestra, with Gregory Berg, as storyteller.  Rita Gentile, soprano, will also sing some holiday favorites.

Following the concert refreshments will be served in the gym and Santa will be available for a photo op.  You may bring your camera and take your own pictures, or Mikasi’s Photography will be on hand to take professional photos.

Start out your holiday season with this joyful experience.

February 13, 2010  “A Classic Valentine”
Schumann Piano Concerto
Beethoven Symphony No. 2

Fumi Nishikiori, Piano

Gerald Finzi’s beautiful miniature entitled “Romance” starts the program off and is a perfect fit for this romantic evening.  Then Ms. Nishikiori will perform Robert Schumann’s Concerto in A minor, op. 54 which is a wonderful way to celebrate the 200th anniversary of this gifted composer’s birth.  It took a number of years before Schumann actually completed this concerto.  The work ended up being, no doubt, the greatest success of Schumann’s career, and has never fallen out of favor with pianists or public since.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D major, op. 36 concludes the evening.  This is one of his lesser known symphonies; however, Beethoven writes it with a superb sense of how the colors of the orchestra can be combined and contrasted.  In this, he reveals a heartier sense of humor in the Second Symphony than one finds in the symphonies of Mozart and Haydn.  It is a graceful score, but you will find that there is something powerful and audacious just beneath the surface.

Fumi Nishikiori, Distinguished Musician Award winner of the IBLA Grand Prize Competition in Sicily, Italy, was raved for her performance with “great technical velocity with passion and sensitivity” for her performance of works by Schumann.

May 8, 2010  “Russian Nights”
Stravinsky Suite No. 2
Glazunov Violin Concerto
Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5

Jeanyi Kim, Violin

The season ends with a celebration of Russian music, and we are treated to three different Russian composers.  First is Ignor Stravinsky’s Suite No. 2 for Small Orchestra.  The suite is in four movements – March, Waltz, Polka, and Galop, and is a sparkling showpiece for the brass and woodwinds.

Alexander Glazunov’s Violin Concerto in A minor, op. 82 is the second piece Ms. Kim will entertain us with.    He composed this concerto in 1904 for the great Hungarian virtuoso, Leopold Auer, who loved this piece and played it often.  It is typically played without pause, and one of its most intriguing features is how the slow second movement is enveloped by the first.

Symphony No. 5 in E minor, op. 64, written by Piotr Tchaikovsky, is the final piece.  The four movements show great contrast going from a spirited waltz to the fourth movement which rings out with bombastic vigor and confidence.  This is surely an evening to be enjoyed.

Violinist Jeanyi Kim has performed as a soloist throughout North and South America, as well as Europe.  A passionate chamber musician, Ms. Kim is a founding member of the Philomusica Quartet and a featured artist in the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Chicago.