SEMO Orchestra to perform Elgar, Dvorak next week at River Campus

The Southeast Missouri State University Orchestra and guest cellist Julian Schwarz will present a two-piece program Tuesday, April 23, at the River Campus in Cape Girardeau.

The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Bedell Performance Hall, 518 S. Fountain St.

The first half of the program will feature Schwarz performing Elgar’s famous Cello Concerto in E Minor.

Sara Edgerton, professor of low strings and director of orchestra at SEMO, said she was able to watch Schwarz perform this particular piece before and decided they had to get him to play in Cape Girardeau.

“I heard him play this same piece just last year in Paducah (Kentucky) with the Paducah Symphony, and I was entranced with his playing. I thought it was so beautiful and so attractive. It’s also a piece that I love,” Edgerton said.

In the second half of the program, the orchestra will perform one of the most popular symphonic works of all time: according to Edgerton: Dvorak’s “From the New World” symphony. She said if people do not know the work by name, they will know it by hearing it because of its popularity.

“Devorah Jacques wrote that when he was here in this country, about 100 years ago, he came over to the Director of Music Conservatory again in New York City. So he was inspired by the American music, the native African American music that he heard. So when we hear this as American audiences, we connect with it because it’s kind of our heritage, as well as Devorah Jacques, who’s writing from Czechoslovakia. So it also has these wonderful sort of Eastern European rhythms and things, so it’s just kind of a melting pot. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful piece,” Edgerton said about the second half of the performance.

She said even with its popularity, the piece has not been performed at SEMO for over a decade. It also showcases each instrument section in the orchestra.

“The beauties of the symphony orchestra is it has all the instruments — we have percussion, we have French horns, we have trombone, timpani, we have all of that as well as the strings. So it brings together basically all the instruments that are there onstage,” she said about the orchestra she is conducting.

Edgerton will be retiring after 33 years, so this will be her last time conducting for SEMO.

For more information or to purchase tickets, contact the River Campus Box Office at (573) 651-2289 or online at www.SEMO.edu/river-campus-events/calendar.