by Valeria Fanelli –

Celebrate spring with a musical journey to Italy – through the eyes of composers from northern lands who visited this beautiful and captivating country, at the Mandel Hall (University of Chicago) on April 25, 2015, from 8 to 9:30 p.m.

The German composer Felix Mendelssohn described his “Italian” Symphony No. 4 in A Major, written after an extensive European tour in 1829-31, as “the jolliest piece I have ever done.” The British composer Sir Edward Elgar crafted his concert overture Alassio, or In the South, while on a family holiday in the Italian Riviera in 1903-04. And the Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky penned his exuberant Capriccio Italien after an inspiring trip to Rome in 1880, where he witnessed Carnival in full swing.

USO Music Director Barbara Schubert and UChicago graduate student Chaz Lee share the podium for this richly colorful and engagingly energetic program.