Opening Night: Pictures at an Exhibition

The sound of fireworks at the beginning of Hector Berlioz’ Roman Carnival sets the tone for a joyous start to our 81st concert season as Maestro Edwin Outwater returns to the Long Beach Symphony podium for Opening Night! Notable among the charming passages in this short work is a prominent and famous solo for the English Horn – an instrument not often highlighted. Next, French composer Edouard Lalo transports us to Spain in his Symphonie espagnole. The virtuosic talents of the Symphony’s renowned Concertmaster, Roger Wilkie, celebrating his 25th Anniversary with the Symphony, will bring the Spanish motifs of this work to life. The second half of the program features Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite in 10 movements composed by Modest Mussorgsky in 1874 for piano, and transcribed for orchestra by Maurice Ravel in 1922. Mussorgsky skillfully links the suite’s movements in a way that depicts the viewer’s own progress in walking through the exhibition.