Free | No ticket required
Also streaming live

Pre-concert talk starts at 7 pm

Oriol Sans, conductor
Kelby Schnepel, graduate student conductor
Hyunyoung Hwang, clarinet
Winner of the 2023 Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition

Program: Li: Purple Mountains; Copland: Clarinet Concerto; Price: Symphony No. 1

This program features American orchestral music from the 20th and 21st centuries. African instruments, Caribbean dances, and northern European traditions come together in Symphony No. 1 by Florence Price. The first black woman recognized as a symphonic composer, this symphony was Price’s first and very successful attempt at the genre, and she would return to it on three other occasions.

The concert will open with Purple Mountains by Shuying Li. Written in 2023 and co-commissioned by the Mead Witter School of Music (this is its Wisconsin premiere), the piece extracts moments from Li’s opera When The Purple Mountains Burn, which explores the Nanking Massacre in China during World War II. In the first half of the concert, Hyunyoung Hwang, 2023 Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition winner, will solo in Aaron Copland’s beautiful Clarinet Concerto.

……
Clarinetist Hyunyoung Hwang, winner of the 2023 Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition, has a performance career history in his homeland South Korea and in the United States. Since the age of 10, Hyunyoung has maintained an active career in chamber music, orchestra, and solo performances in Carnegie Hall, Kaufman Music Center, Lotte Concert Hall, Seoul Arts Center and the Seoul National Opera House. Furthermore, he has performed with the numerous professional major orchestras in South Korea such as Hankyung Arte TV Philharmonic Orchestra, Jeonju Philharmonic, and he is currently in the substitute pool for the Tucson Symphony, York Symphony, Hankyung Arte TV Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

He earned his Bachelor of Music degree from the Korea National University of Arts as a merit-based scholarship. Upon the graduation, he moved to New York to continue his studies at Manhattan School of Music, receiving the President’s Award scholarship. He has been under the guidance of Professor Jerry Chae, Gwang-ho Oh, and Minjo Kim over the course of four years during his studies in Korea National University of Arts, and received guidance from Charles Neidich at Manhattan School of Music. He is currently a DMA student at UW–Madison studying under Professor Alicia Lee.