BI-CO ORCHESTRA TO PERFORM SPRING CONCERT

About 70 Bryn Mawr and Haverford students will perform in the Haverford-Bryn Mawr Orchestra's spring concert on Friday, April 16, at 8 p.m. in Haverford's Marshall Auditorium. The concert, which will include performances of Verdi's Nabucco Overture, Mozart's Violin Concerto #5 in A Major, Bach's Double Violin Concerto in D Minor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, will feature solos by the winners of Haverford's annual concerto competition.

The overture of Nabucco, Verdi's operatic treatment of the Biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar, offers a lively interplay of brass, woodwinds and strings as it introduces several themes that are developed in the opera.

Mozart's Concerto A Major ("Turkish"), K. 219, is scored for strings, two oboes and two horns — a common configuration in the violin concertos. Among the last four Mozart wrote, while he was living in Salzburg in 1775, the concerto incorporates a minor theme based on Turkish and Hungarian gypsy music. Melanie Smith, Haverford '06, will perform the solo in this piece.

Bach wrote the Double Violin Concerto in D Minor for two violins, strings and continuo in 1717, and may have been one of the soloists in its first performance. One of the best-known works of the Baroque repertoire, the Double Concerto is famous for its "sisterly discourse" between the two soloists, overshadowing the traditional solo/tutti exchange. Bryn Mawr students Kathryn Kleppinger '04 and Junette Teng '04 will perform the solos.

Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, a four-movement orchestral suite composed in 1888, is inspired by The Thousand and One Nights. This collection of tales is framed by the story of Scheherazade, who repeatedly escapes death at the hands of her husband, Sultan Shahryar, by means of her narrative prowess. Shahryar, who had vowed to kill his wife each morning and marry a new virgin each day, daily delays the execution of Scheherazade so that she can continue to entertain him with her stories. Karen Jenks '04 will play the plaintive violin solo that signals Scheherazade's theme.

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