Baylor Symphony Opens New Season

October 14, 1998

by Richard Veit

The Baylor University Symphony Orchestra will present its first concert of the 1998-99 season--with music by Gershwin, Prokofieff and Beethoven-- at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20, in Jones Concert Hall. The performance will be under the direction of Stephen Heyde, Baylor's Mary Franks Thompson Professor of Orchestral Studies, director of orchestral activities, and Conductor-in-Residence.
George Gershwin's musical Girl Crazy was written in collaboration with his brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin. With such tunes as "Bidin' My Time," "Embraceable You" and "I Got Rhythm," it proved to be one of Broadway's brightest hits of 1930. The Baylor Symphony Orchestra will present the overture in an arrangement by Robert McBride.
Though the ballet Cinderella dates from the darkest years of World War II, Sergei Prokofieff's inspired melodies remain timeless and captivating. The composer extracted three concert suites from the ballet but made no effort to order them in chronological sequence. Heyde will instead present an extended series of 17 excerpts that preserve the storyline intact.
The great German composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, composed his Third Symphony in honor of Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he viewed as a champion of political freedom. In 1804, when Beethoven learned that Napoleon had declared himself emperor, the furious composer tore up the original Napoleonic reference in the dedication and re-christened the work, simply, "Heroic symphony to celebrate the memory of a great man." Now known as the "Eroica" Symphony, it is a dramatic and innovative composition that changed the course of musical history.
The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call 710-3991.