Baylor Symphony Concert Features Concerto Winners

by Richard Veit

Two winners of the 2000 Baylor University concerto competition will appear as soloists in the Baylor Symphony Orchestra concert at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 1, in Jones Concert Hall. The orchestra's conductor is Stephen Heyde, director of orchestral activities and Conductor-in-Residence.
Graduate conductor Bradley Schliesser will lead the opening piece, the overture to Giuseppe Verdi's opera, La forza del destino.
Michele Gunn will be the soloist in a performance of Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Fantaisie in G minor for Viola and Orchestra, Op. 94. Gunn, a senior from Houston, placed second in the concertino division of the competition in November. Graduate conductor Eduardo Espinel will conduct the Hummel piece.
Schliesser will return to the podium when the 95-member Baylor Symphony Orchestra plays The Moldau, the most famous of the six symphonic poems in Bedrich Smetana's nationalistic suite, Má vlast (My Fatherland).
Concluding the program will be the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The soloist, Christine Bethanne Hill, is a sophomore from Niceville, Florida. She won first prize in the concerto division of the Baylor concerto competition.
This concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at 710-3991.