The Prince George Symphony Orchestra will perform at Vanier Hall on Saturday night, the first time the PGSO has played its regular venue since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Music Director Michael Hall will lead a welcoming program that features two musicians with ties to the Prince George.
The evening will open with the premiere of PG resident composer and PGSO principal clarinetist Simon Cole’s newest work for orchestra, The Return. Written during the height of the pandemic, the piece reflects the complexity and heightened emotion of the past two years, always with the hope of a return to some normality.
“As I slept at the sacred mountain I saw, chaos,” writes the composer in his program note for the piece, “…we catch flashes of the land as it was, that is our destination.” The piece was commissioned by the PGSO with funding from the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George.
Prince George native, violinist Karl Stobbe, returns from his international solo career to join the orchestra for Ralph Vaughan Williams’ pastoral masterpiece, The Lark Ascending and Mozart’s Rondo in C Major.
The evening will end with the quirky yet often profound Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar. According to Hall, “Each of the fourteen variations is a musical portrait of one of the composer’s personal friends and family, identified only in little riddles or initials. At one level it’s a big inside joke for Elgar and his friends, but it’s such beautiful music it has become one of his most famous and enduring pieces.”
Masks and proof of vaccination are required and patrons are asked to maintain social distancing indoors as possible. Patrons are requested to arrive early to allow time for vaccine scanning.
The performance starts at 7:30 p.m., with doors open at 7. Tickets are $40 each, $37 for seniors, $30 for those under 30 and $15 for those under 18. They are available online at www.pgso.com.
