Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with pianist Garrick Ohlsson

Thursday, Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m
Weis Center Concert Hall

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is a radical experiment in musical democracy, proving for 50 years what happens when exceptional artists gather with total trust in each other and faith in the creative process. Orpheus began in 1972 when cellist Julian Fifer assembled a group of New York freelancers to play the orchestral repertoire as if it were chamber music. In that age, the idealistic Orpheans snubbed the “corporate” path of symphony orchestras and learned how to play, plan and promote concerts as a collective with leadership roles rotating.

It’s one thing for four players in a string quartet to lean in to the group sound and react spontaneously, but with 20 to 30 musicians together, the complexities and payoffs are magnified exponentially. Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s catalog of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch and other labels has grown to include more than 70 albums that stand as benchmarks of the chamber orchestra repertoire, including Haydn symphonies, Mozart concertos and 20th-century gems by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Ravel and Bartók.

Orpheus’s performance will include Garrick Ohlsson, a trusted Mozart partner who has been hailed for his “muscular technique and the sensitivity and restraint with which he deploys it” by The New York Times, and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 (Jeunehomme). While Mozart melded styles from near and far to redefine the concerto genre, Brahms mined Handel (and Bach and Beethoven) to craft what he later called his “favorite work,” the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24, another piece to be performed. Composer and six-time Grammy-winner Billy Childs infuses classical traditions with his jazz roots in a new work for Orpheus.

Ticket Information

Adults: $35
Seniors 62+ and subscribers: $28
Youth 18 and under: $25
Bucknell employees and retirees (limit two tickets): $25
Bucknell students (limit one ticket, ID required): Free
Non-Bucknell students: $25

Campus Box Office