ARCO Chamber Orchestra to perform works by Mozart, Glinka, and Schubert

The ARCO Chamber Orchestra will bring rarely performed chamber music to the Hodgson Concert Hall on Tuesday, April 10, at 8 p.m. The concert program features works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mikhail Glinka, and Franz Schubert.

The concert’s program opens with Mozart’s String Duo No.1 in G Major, K.423, which was originally written as a violin and viola duo. Later, a brilliant arrangement was orchestrated for solo violin and orchestra by Russian composer Ruslan Mursyakaev, which is what will be performed. Levon Ambartsumian, the Franklin Professor of Violin at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music and director of ARCO Chamber Orchestra, will perform as a soloist. Jaclyn Hartenberger, director of Wind Symphony Band, will conduct as a guest conductor.

In addition to Mozart, the orchestra will perform Glinka’s Divertimento Brilliante which was written for piano and orchestra, with professor of piano Evgeny Rivkin performing as a soloist. This elegant composition is based on the themes from Bellini’s Opera La Somnambula. It reflects Glinka’s fascination with Italian culture and opera during his visit in Italy.

The second half of the concert will feature Schubert’s String Quartet, Death and the Maiden. This virtuosic chamber piece was written in his later years when his health was declining. Death is an underlying theme of this composition and creates great drama with a rich palette of emotions. This is a challenging program, even for a quartet, so each member of the orchestra will perform as part of the quartet throughout the piece.

The ARCO Chamber Orchestra was originally founded in Russia in 1989 at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory by Ambartsumian. When he joined the UGA faculty in 1995, he remained the artistic director and conductor of the orchestra, moving its home base to the Hodgson School, where the ensemble has become a blend of talented international musicians. ARCO has performed numerous times in many different concert venues. In 2011, ARCO was invited to perform at La Fenice, the world-famous Opera House in Venice, Italy. The orchestra also toured in more than five cities throughout Brazil in 2015 and 2017.

Tickets for the concert are $22 for adults and $6 with a UGA student ID and are available at pac.uga.edu or by calling the PAC box office at 706-542-4400. For those unable to attend, the concert will be streamed at music.uga.edu/streaming.

~ By Yeasol Kang