Southeast's orchestra ends season with special guest and two well-known works

The Southeast Missouri Symphony Orchestra will wrap up its 2009-2010 season with a special guest and a works by two master composers.

The Southeast Missouri Symphony Orchestra will perform two works, Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" and Mozart's "Symphony No. 40 in G Minor" at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Bedell Performance Hall at Southeast's River Campus.

Violin solist Liesl Schoenberger will play with the orchestra. Schoenberger, a Cape Girardeau native and graduate of Indiana University, is pursuing an artist diploma from Yale University. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and the Grand Ole Opry, and has also performed throughout Europe.

Schoenberger "is contributing a huge amount to making this a very exciting program," said Dr. Sara Edgerton, professor of cello and string bass at Southeast.

Schoenberger will be the violin soloist throughout the symphony's first selection, Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons."

"All of the seasons have a solo part," Edgerton said. "Vivaldi himself was a violinist, and he originally was a soloist in each of the different seasons. It's pretty virtuosic writing and so they all require a violin soloist."

Paul Thompson will be narrating the sonnets that were written specifically for "The Four Seasons."

"The poems that were written, we think that most likely Vivaldi himself wrote them, but if not, he definitely chose them and placed them with each of these four seasons," Edgerton said.

The orchestra will perform Mozart's "Symphony No. 40 in G Minor" for the second half of the show. This recognizable selection was admired by other classical masters, including Beethoven.

"Ticket sales have been going very well," Edgerton said. "As of Friday, there were about 100 seats still available, but they'll go quickly."

Tickets can be purchased through metrotix.com, by calling the River Campus box office at 651-2265 or at the box office.