Baylor Symphony Orchestra Welcomes Guest Cellist Nov. 17

by Richard Veit

The Baylor Symphony Orchestra will feature the talents of cellist Marek Szpakiewicz, winner of the 2003 Mu Phi Epsilon International Competition, during its next concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17, in Jones Concert Hall in the Glennis McCrary Music Building.
A native of Lubin, Poland, Szpakiewicz has performed as soloist with orchestras in Europe and the United States. He is now a doctoral student at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music.
At Baylor, he will perform as soloist in the Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33, by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. This work was premiered at the Paris Conservatoire in 1873. Ostensibly constructed in a single movement, it falls into three distinct sections that are played without pause.
The concert will open with Bohemian composer Antonín Dvorák's lively Carnival Overture, Op. 92, a delightful work dating from Dvorák's departure for America in the spring of 1892, followed by Suite No. 2 from Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev's marvelous ballet from 1938, Romeo and Juliet.
The program will close with a performance of Variations on "America" by the iconoclastic American composer Charles Ives. This witty piece was originally intended for organ, but William Schuman orchestrated it in 1963, and today it is heard more often in that reconstituted guise.
The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at (254) 710-3991.