Feel the Music as the Santa Maria Philharmonic presents RHAPSODY in April.  Maestro Nowak will conduct the orchestra in two all-time-favorite works, featuring world-class pianist Chih-Long Hu.
 
Both works on this program were premiered in the United States. Dvorák’s “New World” Symphony inspired by African-American spirituals, and Native American music, was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1893.  It quickly became a favorite orchestral work, made ever more popular when Astronaut Neil Armstrong chose to take a recording of it on Apollo 11 to the first Moon landing in 1969.  

Pianist Chih-Long Hu will amaze the audience with his extraordinary technical virtuosity, in Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. This work was premiered in 1934 in Baltimore Maryland with Rachmaninoff at the keyboard. It was an immediate success and it has become a cornerstone in the piano repertoire. Variation 18 is one of the most recognizable themes, and has been used in several film scores, including Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.