Our February Concert features the Soprano soloist, Diana Farrell, recent winner of our Clark J. Haines Memorial Concerto Competition. Diana joins us to perform two of your favorite opera selections, “Come scoglio immoto resta” from Mozart's “Così fan Tutte” and “Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore” from Puccini's “Tosca”. Diania's encore will be the “Alleluia” from Mozart's motet, “Exsultate, jubilate”. Franck's colorful tone poem, “The Accursed Huntsman” begins these programs and the orchestra concludes with the great Eighth Symphony of Beethoven. Plan to join us for this beautiful and exciting program!

César Franck — Le Chasseur Maudit
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Come scoglio immoto resta (Così fan tutte)
Giacomo Puccini — Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore (Tosca)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Alleluia (Exsultate, jubilate)
Ludwig van Beethoven — Symphony No. 8

Saturday, February 11, 8 p.m.
Shiloh Church

Sunday, February 12, 3 p.m.
Kettering Fairmont High School Auditorium

Tickets are available in advance and at the door

The Miami Valley Symphony Orchestra hosted the Clark J. Haines Memorial Concerto Competition at Parkview United Methodist Church on Saturday April 30, 2011. This competition is held annually in honor of the late Clark Haines, who served as a conductor for the MVSO, as well as many other area performing groups.

Musicians came from the Dayton area and from as far away as Cleveland and the University of Kentucky to audition for a panel of judges which included Dr. Linda Hartley, Teri Goerretta and Tom Sobieski. Age is not a factor in the competition. The youngest competitors were high school students, while the oldest was probably in his late fifties.

The winner of the competition, Diana Farrell, of Cleveland, Ohio, sang the aria, “Come Scoglio” from Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. Diana will be awarded the prize of $300 and will have the opportunity to sing with the MVSO during its next concert season. The concerts will be conducted by the MVSO Music Director, Dr. Kenneth Kohlenberg.

Diana Farrell, a soprano from Massachusetts, is currently a student of the celebrated Wagnerian soprano, Ms. Jane Eaglen, and holds an Artist Diploma from the Cleveland Institute of Music where she studied with Dr. Mary Schiller. She earned her M.M. in Vocal Performance from Youngstown State University where she sang in the studio of Dr. Misook Yun, served as the Graduate Assistant for the Musicology and Opera Departments, and graduated with a 4.0 GPA. Ms. Farrell began her studies in the studio of Dr. Mary Brown Bonacci at Westfield State College where she graduated with a B.A. in Music, concentrated in Vocal Performance, and received the Department Performance Award.

Diana has performed as a Young Artist for the Crested Butte Music Festival as well as with Opera Western Reserve in Youngstown, Ohio. She returns in fall 2011 to Opera Western Reserve where she will cover and sing the title role in the children's matinee of Tosca. With Opera Western Reserve, she has appeared in the children’s matinee performances as Micaëla in Carmen, and in the title role of Madama Butterfly. After her performance as Contessa Almaviva in the Crested Butte Music Festival’s Le nozze di Figaro, she was seen as Rosalinda in Simsbury Light Opera Company’s production of Die Fledermaus. Other credits include the title role of Amelia Goes to the Ball, Mother (Little Red Riding Hood), Contessa Ceprano (Rigoletto), 2nd Knitter (Game of Chance), and Madame Heartmelt (Impresario).

Previous concert engagements include a performance of Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été with the Dana Symphony Orchestra and the Messiah soprano soloist with the Westfield Festival Choir. A past winner of the Dana Concerto Competition and the Tri-States NATS Regional Student Auditions in the Advanced Women’s category, Ms. Farrell has performed in master classes with world-renowned artists such as Lawrence Brownlee, Dawn Upshaw, Michael Chioldi, composer Lori Laitman and pedagogue Shirley Emmons.

The 2012 MVSO concerto competition will be held in the spring of 2012, please watch the MVSO web site for dates, rules and applications as the date approaches. For more information about the concerto competition or the MVSO, please see www.mvso.org.

Our December concerts will be festive occasions as we perform marches, polkas and waltzes from the Strauss family as we approach the New Year's and seasonal celebrations. These festive concerts even begin with "A Festival Prelude" by American composer Alfred Reed. Join us as we also feature the highly talented, and local, young cellist, Josh Halpern, in Tchaikovsky's fascinating Rococo Variations.

Alfred Reed — A Festival Prelude
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — Variations on a Rococo Theme
Richard Strauss — Serenade in E flat
Aaron Copland — Variations on a Shaker Melody
Johann Strauss II — Thunder and Lightning Polka
Johann Strauss II — Beautiful Blue Danube Waltz
Johann Strauss I — Radetzky March

Saturday, December 10, 8 p.m.
Temple Israel

Sunday, December 11, 3 p.m.
Kettering Fairmont High School Auditorium

Tickets are available in advance and at the door

Josh Halpern, 18, is principal cellist of the Starling Chamber Orchestra, a pre-college program for advanced strings students at the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music. In 2011, Josh won the senior string division of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) solo competition, and with the Polaris Quartet was the gold medal winner in the junior division of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Association competition. He has been principal cellist of the Dayton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and the Oakwood High School Symphony Orchestra, and was a founding member of the Blackbird String Quartet which performed at public and private events throughout the Miami Valley from 2006-2010.

Josh, an honors student at Oakwood High School, spends his summers studying cello. In 2010 and 2011, he attended the Meadowmount School of Music in Westport, New York, a seven-week summer school for accomplished young strings players training for professional careers in music. At Meadowmount, he studied with Hans Jørgen Jensen, professor of cello at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music. During previous summers, Josh attended the Boston University Tanglewood Institute String Quartet Workshop (2009) and the Credo Chamber Music Program at Oberlin Conservatory (2008-2009). Since 2009, Josh has studied with Alan Rafferty, cellist in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Josh was a finalist in the MVSO's annual concerto competition, and will perform Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococco Theme.

Our 22nd concert season begins with a group of spectacular orchestral favorites from the Romantic era. The works span across Europe from Spain through France and Germany to Russia. Included is our tribute to the bicentennial of Franz Liszt, the father of what became that great Romantic institution in composing — the symphonic poem. This first concert in October happens to fall right on Liszt's 200th birthday!

Carl Maria von Weber — Oberon Overture
Emmanuel Chabrier — España
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — Marche Slave
Leo Delibes — Sylvia Suite
Franz Liszt — Les Préludes

Saturday, October 22, 8 p.m.
Shiloh Church

Sunday, October 23, 3 p.m.
Kettering Fairmont High School Auditorium

Tickets are available in advance and at the door

Due to circumstances beyond our control, service to the MVSO post office box was interrupted from September 22 to October 5, 2011. Mail service has now been restored. If you attempted to contact the MVSO by mail and did not receive a response, please call (937)602-4950 or email to confirm that we received your message.