The Reno Chamber Orchestra (RCO) has announced its 2011-12 season. The RCO’s 38th year of bringing chamber orchestra music to the Truckee Meadows features Theodore Kuchar, who enters his ninth season as the Orchestra’s music director. He will conduct all of the season’s five concerts, each of which will be presented in Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon performances.
The season includes internationally acclaimed guest artists and music ranging from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, including composers like Mozart, Schubert, and Vivaldi. Concluding the season will be a large-scale choral collaboration with the UNR Chamber Singers and Concert Choir.
The Reno Chamber Orchestra has maintained last season’s range of affordable ticket prices. $5 concert tickets are available for everyone eighteen years of age and younger and all full-time students.
More information on the Orchestra and its 2011-12 season is available by calling (775) 348-9413 or at RenoChamberOrchestra.org.
The season includes the following performances:
September 17 and 18, 2011
Violinist Chad Hoopes, a 16-year-old prodigy who has already performed with orchestras like the San Francisco Symphony and made multiple appearances on the award-winning program From The Top, so impressed audiences at his first RCO performances in 2010 that he was immediately asked to return. He will perform American composer Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto and two pieces by famed violinist Fritz Kreisler. RCO music director and conductor Theodore Kuchar also leads the Orchestra in music by Mozart and Kodaly.
October 15 and 16, 2011
Cellist Wendy Warner, one of the most acclaimed performers on her instrument and a featured musician at the Reno Chamber Orchestra’s annual Nevada Chamber Music Festival, returns to Reno to perform Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1. She is joined by RCO principal cellist Peter Lenz in Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Cellos. Also on the program, conducted by Theodore Kuchar, are works by Haydn and Leo Weiner.
January 28 and 29, 2012
Pianist Pascal Rogé, one of the world’s most famous pianists and winner of the prestigious Grande Prix du Disque, Edison, and Gramophone awards, performs the Piano Concerto No. 5, the “Egyptian,” by French composer Camille Saint-Saens. Complementing that work is the “Egyptian March” by the “Waltz King,” Johann Strauss Jr. Theodore Kuchar conducts the program, which also features the “Great C major” Symphony by Franz Schubert.
March 3 and 4, 2012
Pianist James Winn, winner of the Governor’s Arts Award for Artistic Excellence and music professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, performs concertos by Mozart and Hindemith with Theodore Kuchar and the Orchestra, in a program that also includes music by Bizet and Cimarosa.
April 14 and 15, 2012
The first half of this program will feature a performance by the first prize winner of the RCO’s annual College Concerto Competition. In the second half, the UNR Chamber Singers and Concert Choir (Dr. Paul Torkelson, director) will join the Orchestra and Theodore Kuchar in a performance of the Stabat Mater by Rossini.
The Reno Chamber Orchestra
Founded in 1974, the Reno Chamber Orchestra presents concerts to audiences in northern Nevada and beyond. Over the course of its 38 years, some of the world’s most famous performers have appeared with the RCO, including Leonard Nimoy, Itzhak Perlman, Edgar Meyer, James Buswell, and Pepe and Angel Romero. Reno Magazine has named the RCO one of its Best of Reno Top 101, and the RCO has won the title of Best Performing Arts Group in the Reno Gazette-Journal’s annual “Best of Reno” survey. Along with its regular season of performances, the RCO presents the annual Nevada Chamber Music Festival in December, the College Concerto Competition (Nevada’s only music competition for college students), and a host of other concerts and events. More information is available at renochamberorchestra.org.
Theodore Kuchar
Maestro Theodore Kuchar is the most recorded conductor of his generation, with over 100 compact discs to his credit on the Brilliant Classics, Naxos, Marco Polo, and Ondine labels. He holds the posts of Reno Chamber Orchestra music director, artistic director of the RCO’s Nevada Chamber Music Festival, music director of the Fresno Philharmonic and the Janácek Philharmonic (Ostrava, Czech Republic), resident conductor of Kent/Blossom Music, and conductor emeritus of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. In early 2011 he also assumed the post of artistic director of the Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. He has collaborated with world-renowned artists like James Galway, Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell, Jessye Norman, Sarah Chang, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Frederica von Stade.
Chad Hoopes
At age 16, violinist Chad Hoopes has already performed with ensembles throughout the world including the San Francisco Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera and the Brussels Chamber Orchestra. Beyond the concert hall, his virtuosity and personality have been featured on the CBS Early Show, NBC, National Public Radio, and PBS’s From the Top: Live at Carnegie Hall. In April 2008, he won first prize in the Young Artists Division of the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition.
Wendy Warner
Wendy Warner has become one of the leading cellists in the world. After garnering international attention with a first-prize win in the Fourth International Rostropovich Competition in Paris in 1990, audiences have watched Warner perform on many of the world’s most honored stages, including Carnegie Hall, Symphony Hall in Boston, Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Hall, Paris’s Salle Pleyel and Berlin’s Philharmonie. She has recorded compact discs for the Cedille, Bridge and Naxos labels, and is a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Pascal Rogé
Pascal Rogé is one of the most renowned French pianists in the world today. He has won many prestigious awards, including two Gramophone awards, a Grand Prix du Disque and an Edison Award. His many recordings include the complete piano works of Poulenc and Ravel. He has performed in almost every major concert hall in the world. Some of the orchestras he has appeared with include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, L’Orchestre de Paris, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus.
James Winn
James Winn, piano and composition professor at the University of Nevada, Reno since 1997, has performed widely in North America, Europe, and Japan. He has been a solo pianist with the New York City Ballet, a member of the New York New Music Ensemble and of Hexagon, as well as a frequent guest with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Group for Contemporary Music. Well-known as a specialist in new music, he has been involved in world premieres and premiere recordings by thirteen Pulitzer Prize winning composers.
The 2011-12 Season
Saturday, September 17, 2011, 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, September 18, 2011, 2:00 p.m.
Theodore Kuchar, conductor
Chad Hoopes, violin
Kodaly: Hungarian Rondo
Mozart: Symphony No. 36 “Linz”
Kreisler: Caprice Viennois and Liebesfreud
Barber: Violin Concerto
Saturday, October 15, 2011, 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, October 16, 2011, 2:00 p.m.
Theodore Kuchar, conductor
Wendy Warner and Peter Lenz, cello
Weiner: Divertimento No. 1
Haydn: Symphony No. 86
Vivaldi: Concerto for Two Cellos
Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1
Saturday, January 28, 2012, 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, January 29, 2012, 2:00 p.m.
Theodore Kuchar, conductor
Pascal Rogé, piano
J. Strauss: Egyptian March
Saint-Saens: Piano Concerto No. 5 “Egyptian”
Schubert: Symphony No. 9 “Great C Major”
Saturday, March 3, 2012, 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, March 4, 2012, 2:00 p.m.
Theodore Kuchar, conductor
James Winn, piano
Cimarosa: Overture to Il Matrimonio Segreto
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25
Hindemith: Kammermusik #2
Bizet: L’Arlesienne Suite (original version)
Saturday, April 14, 2012, 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, April 15, 2012, 2:00 p.m.
Theodore Kuchar, conductor
College Concerto Competition Winner
UNR Chamber Singers and Concert Choir,
Dr. Paul Torkelson, Director
Rossini: Stabat Mater
All concerts at Nightingale Concert Hall, UNR
Programs and artists subject to change
