UTC Symphony Orchestra presents Tchaikovsky and More

Conducted by Sandy Morris, this 65-member college/community orchestra includes music majors and non-majors from UTC and Chattanooga State, UTC music faculty members, area music educators and other talented amateur and professional musicians from the region.

The concert features Peter Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2, in which he deftly incorporated several Ukrainian folk tunes.The work was very successful from its first performance because of Tchaikovsky’s exciting development of the themes, and it won critical acclaim among Russia’s nationalistic composers known as “The Five.”

Also on the program is the overture to Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco, his first widely acclaimed opera chronicles the exile of the Jews from their homeland by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. A hauntingly beautiful work entitled Longing for Your Return by Steven Amundson, professor of music theory and conducting and conductor of orchestras at St. Olaf College, provides a respite between these powerful works.