Is there a more festive way to open this, in many ways special season, than with the brilliant Festive Overture by Dmitri Shostakovich? Maestro John Axelrod, a versatile conductor and charismatic audience favorite, will lead our orchestra through treasured works of Russian music literature by Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, and our audience will finally be able to listen to world-famous piano virtuoso Behzod Abduraimov play Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which is still considered one of the most technically demanding pieces of piano music.

Program Notes