Daniel Sternberg Conducts the Baylor Symphony

by Richard Veit

Dean Emeritus Daniel Sternberg -- conductor of the Waco Symphony Orchestra for a quarter century and dean of the School of Music for nearly 40 years -- returns to the Baylor University campus to conduct an ensemble that he created back in the 1940s, the Baylor Symphony Orchestra. Sternberg will lead the orchestra in an all-Russian program on Tuesday, April 7, beginning at 8 p.m. in Jones Concert Hall.
Appearing as soloist in this historic concert will be professor of piano and Artist-in-Residence Krassimira Jordan, who will perform Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1. Jordan, who studied with two legendary Russian pianist/masterteachers, Stanislav Neuhaus and Emil Gilels, has been on the Baylor music faculty since 1989. Sternberg, a native of Poland who was educated in Vienna, served under Fritz Stiedry as assistant conductor of the pre-war Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. One of the works that he conducted during that period was this same concerto, with Shostakovich himself as soloist. The concerto's prominent trumpet part will be played by Kenneth Howard, a senior music major from Mesquite.
In addition to the Shostakovich, the Baylor Symphony Orchestra concert will include Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. The fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet stands as one of Tchaikovsky's most popular compositions. Originally written in 1869, but then thoroughly revised 12 years later, this programmatic piece depicts the Shakespeare tragedy by means of exciting orchestral attacks and bittersweet lyricism. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote his symphonic suite Scheherazade in 1888. Based on the familiar Arabian tales The Thousand and One Nights, its four colorful movements relate the story of one of Sultan Shahriar's wives, who outwits her master and thus escapes certain death for herself and the other doomed members of the harem.
This concert is free of charge and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at 710-3991.