CANCELLED: Gateway to Romance

The DSO’s early springtime concert opens with Hector Berlioz’s exuberant Festival at the Capulets from his choral symphony Romeo and Juliet, and continues with the heart-rendering passion and touching tenderness of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet: A Fantasy Overture. This carefully crafted tone poem is replete with the hallmarks of Tchaikovsky’s mature style: his long-breathed, aching melodies; his affective harmonies; and his clever utilization of rhythmic patterns to propel the music forward. Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 in D-flat Major, the so-called Romantic, constitutes the second half of the program. Its three-movement structure is unified by the recurrence of the haunting “Interlochen theme,” as well as by its quintessentially American mode of simple and direct expression. In between these two pillars of the repertoire the DSO features the first-place winner of the DuPage Symphony’s 2020 Young Artists Auditions: Nicholas Boettcher, double bass, performing Serge Koussevitzky’s acclaimed Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra, Op. 3.  Don’t miss your chance to hear these stirring orchestral masterpieces and to endorse the talents of one of our local young superstars!