May 22 at 7:30 PM | A Planet’s Odyssey

Buckle your seatbelts and prepare to blast off with us on a journey through outer space! We are “over the moon” to finally present the world premiere of Daniel Perttu’s A Planet’s Odyssey. In this new piano concerto, Perttu and soloist Jeffrey Biegel will take us on a voyage through our solar system in the form of a theme and variations that explores the unique properties and characteristics of each planet. Biegel will follow this premiere with the Andante spianato and Grand Polonaise Brillante of Frederic Chopin, one of the most celebrated figures ever to compose for the piano.

The concert opens with a work inspired by one of the most wonderous marvels in interstellar space – the rapid formation of many new stars in a concentrated area, or starburst. The eponymous work by Jessie Montgomery, a dynamic force on the American composition scene who rose to prominence last decade, is heard from the stage of Umstattd Hall for the first time. Joseph Haydn’s opera Il Mondo della Luna (“The World on the Moon”) is a comedic romp about a fool who gets tricked into believing he’s gone to the moon. While the opera has fallen out of the repertoire, the charming overture captures both the mystique of the moon to the eighteenth century mind, as well as the lighthearted nature of the opera’s plot. The concert concludes with Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony, his last and grandest in scope; so grand in its time that a critic likened it to our solar system’s largest planet.