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Hope College Orchestra to Perform on Friday, Feb. 22

Posted February 12, 2002

HOLLAND -- The Hope College Orchestra will perform on Friday, Feb. 22, at 8 p.m. in Dimnent Memorial Chapel.

The public is invited. Admission is free.

The concert will feature two major works: Felix Mendelssohn's "The Overture, The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave), op. 26," and the "Symphony No. 3 in C minor op. 78" by Camille Saint-Saens. Featured soloist in the symphony will be Hope faculty member and organist Dr. Huw Lewis.

Mendelssohn's music was nourished by the widening scope of his travel, and he was just 20 years old when his trip to the Hebrides inspired the concert's overture. Fingal's Cave, named for a hero of Scotch and Irish legend, is a cavern on the tiny island of Staffa, one of the islands off the west coast of Scotland. Mendelssohn's seascape opens with the theme repeated many times, suggesting the murmuring of the waves within the cave. It is in the development that the more agitated part of the seascape contains at least the hint of a storm, leading to some surprising closing measures.

Saint-Saens' Third Symphony, his most popular and probably his greatest work, was dedicated to the memory of Franz Liszt, a Romantic composer who became a liberating and fertilizing influence on French music. The symphony was commissioned by the London Philharmonic Society and was first performed in 1886 with Saint-Saens conducting. For all its traditionally French and supposedly Classical or Neo-Classical qualities, the symphony is a Romantic work.

Dimnent Memorial Chapel is located on College Avenue at 12th Street.

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