Delaware Symphony Orchestra Highlights Double Bass Concerto in Latest Performance

Experience ravishing melodies at the Laird Performing Arts Center at Tatnall School in Wilmington.

The Delaware Symphony Orchestra’s second Classics Concert of the 2014-2015 season will have two performances of Heaven and Earth, Oct. 17 and Oct. 19, at the Laird Performing Arts Center at Tatnall School in Wilmington. Maestro David Amado leads a program that revels in the powerful connection between music and our human existence. Rossini’s Overture to William Tell is the brilliant opener. It depicts a tranquil dawn, an Alpine storm, a cowherd’s song and the most famous battle music ever written (kidnapped by the Lone Ranger). The DSO’s principal bass Daniel McDougall will perform the Concerto for Double Bass of Serge Koussevitzky, a virtuoso showpiece balanced by singing, heartfelt Russian melodies and unexpected intimacy. A graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music, McDougall joined the DSO in 1996 and has been its principal bassist since 2008. He is also assistant principal of the Pennsylvania Ballet orchestra and plays regularly with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Philly Pops, Opera Philadelphia, the Bach Choir of Bethlehem and others.

He has collaborated with the Copeland String Quartet and will perform with the Pyxis Quartet this spring. His eclectic freelancing has placed him onstage with everyone from Julie Andrews to Peter Gabriel. Dan has a special fondness for the Koussevitzky concerto. In high school, he studied it in a master class for the DSO’s most recent bass soloist, Gary Karr. After conservatory, he performed it with his California hometown’s Livermore-Amador Symphony—with the middle school teacher who started it all playing in the violin section. The second half of the program will be Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, also known as “The Great.” The last symphony completed before his death, Schubert never saw it performed. The 9th Symphony triumphs in its own divinity. It is powerful music that reaches astonishing depths by embracing a sense of human frailty and tenderness together with breathtaking spaciousness and ravishing melodies. It has been called the first truly romantic symphony. For tickets call 652-5577, or hit www.delawaresymphony.org.

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