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September 28, 2007 > Arts & Entertainment > Two Shepherd orchestras prepare engaging concerts

Two Shepherd orchestras prepare engaging concerts

By Jocelyn Wright | Thresher Editorial Staff

Music students at Rice are renowned for the time-intensive sessions they spend honing their craft. All that work comes to fruition as the Shepherd School begins showcasing its musicians in the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra on Oct. 5, with concerts from one of the top student orchestras in the country.

The orchestra’s professional-quality concerts are either free or priced at eight dollars and are just a short walk away at the Alice Pratt Brown Hall.

Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart and Mendelssohn are just a few of the many composers whose works will be featured over the course of the fall season.

Professor of Orchestral Conducting Larry Rachleff says he strove to achieve a mixture of classics and more offbeat pieces when he put together this season’s program. The intention was to unite masterpieces with other pieces that students are unlikely to perform as professionals

The Shepherd School’s first concert of the year will take place Oct. 5 at 8 p.m., and will feature Beethoven’s classic fifth symphony, which has Shepherd School members very excited.

“It’s the best performance I’ve ever played in or heard, and it’s really fun to be a part of,” oboist Stephanie Ide, a graduate student, said.

The Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra debuts Oct. 7 at 8 p.m. with Charles Ives’s Three Places in New England and Felix Mendelssohn’s first piano concerto. This performance features the only student soloist scheduled to play with the orchestra this season: graduate student Wenli Zhou on the piano.

Macelaru will conduct Zhou’s performance. This is his second year conducting — having studied violin at the Shepherd School, Macelaru is familiar with both sides of performance. He said the transition from playing to conducting was somewhat tricky.

“You’re the one that people look at and listen to so it takes a little bit of getting used to,” Macelaru said. “Motivating people to do their best and play their best takes a little bit of work to just know how to read people and to sense when you’re asking too much or when what you’re asking is not possible.”

The orchestra’s second performance includes Johannes Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn and Sergei Prokofiev’s fifth symphony.

The Chamber Orchestra will celebrate Christmas early with Vaughn Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Saint-Saens’s Oratorio de Noel.

The Symphony Orchestra closes the fall season with graduate doctoral student Karl Blench’ Abstract No. 1 for Orchestra, which was his master’s dissertation.

“It’s a study in orchestral color [and] tone color exploring the colors of bell sounds,” Blench said. “It’s the resonance you get from hitting the bell. I was thinking of bells and I actually took bells as a starting off point.”

The orchestra will also play Ravel’s La Valse and Sibelius’s fifth symphony. All the plans have musicians enthusiastic about the upcoming season.

“Because it’s my first year and it’s my first time playing with […] one of the best student orchestras in the world it goes without saying that I’m excited about playing with them,” flutist and Sid Richardson College freshman Natalie Zeldin said.

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