Music Director and Conductor:
Gregory Vajda

Guest Artists:
Susanna Phillips, soprano
Matthew McDonald, bassoon

Weber Overture to Der Freischutz

Weber Bassoon Concerto

WeberInvitation to the Dance

VajdaThe Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoes

R. Strauss Four Last Songs

Wagner Overture to The Flying Dutchman

The soprano Susanna Phillips and the bassoonist Matthew McDonald return home to help the HSO celebrate our state’s bicentennial year in grand style. The music of Carl Maria von Weber, a very popular composer at the time Alabama achieved statehood in 1819, figures prominently in the first half of the program. Maestro Gregory Vajda’s intensely personal setting of a poem by W. B. Yeats, Strauss’ penetrating Four Last Songs, and the thrilling overture to Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman bring the orchestra’s sixty-fourth season to a memorable close.