Ann Hampton Callaway’s back – and this time she’s bringing along her sister, Broadway star Liz Callaway, for their award winning show Sibling Revelry!

Choose your preferred date:

When Midori last performed with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 26 years ago, she was a child prodigy.  Midori has since become a seasoned virtuoso, leading the Baltimore Sun to recognize her "in a class by herself."  She performs Beethoven's Violin Concerto, the crown jewel of the violin repertoire.  The rest of the program includes Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra and the Overture from Los esclavos felices, an opera by Arriaga, the Spanish Mozart.

Choose your preferred date:

One of the most versatile performers in show business, Emmy Award winner Wayne Brady does it all.  His amazing voice, dancing prowess, and razor-sharp humor will be on full display during his debut performance with the ISO. 

Choose your preferred date:

As a young man, Brahms was anointed the next Beethoven.  That decree - some might say a curse - hung over him for 25 years as he struggled to write his First Symphony.  By the time he wrote his Fourth and final Symphony, Brahms was Vienna's most celebrated composer.  The symphony is so unabashed with its emotions, yet so direct in its language.

Time for Three, considered by many to be a trailblazer in classical music, is no stranger to decrees of greatness.  After last year's performance of Jennifer Higdon's Concerto 4-3, the guys return with a second concerto written just for them by Chris Brubeck.

Choose your preferred date:

It's a stretch to call any of Mahler's symphonies restrained, but after the massive Second and Third symphonies, the Fourth and the Fifth are much more subtle affairs.  Despite its energetic outbursts, the Fifth is full of expressive moments.  Its opening movement might be the funeral march, but it's the famous Adagietto that will forever be associated with funerals after its use in the film Death in Venice and its performance under the baton of Leonard Bernstein at Robert Kennedy's burial mass.  Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, which opens the program, is the truly intimate work.  Originally composed for a small orchestra, it was Wagner's birthday gift to his wife.  The premiere took place at their villa with the musicians positioned in the stairwell.

Choose your preferred date:

The orchestra world’s Looney-est concert returns to Indianapolis with new additions and old favorites.  Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck are joined onscreen by new special guests Tom and Jerry, Scooby Doo, The Flintstones and more. 

Choose your preferred date:

Despite the popular notion that Schubert died before he could complete the "Unfinished" Symphony, he actually abandoned the work six years before his death.  Only speculation remains as to why he never completed such a promising work.  Perhaps the growing success of his contemporary Beethoven in the symphonic realm intimidated the impoverished Schubert and persuaded him to focus more on his chamber music and songs.

Mark Wigglesworth returns to lead the mysterious "Unfinished" , Shostakovich's haunting Chamber Symphony for string orchestra, his own arrangement of music from Wagner's Die Meistersinger, and Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with ISO Principal Clarinet David Bellman.

While Mozart wrote 27 piano concertos, 5 violin concertos, 4 horn concertos, concertos for flute, oboe and bassoon, and three concertos for multiple instruments, many consider his Clarinet Concerto - delicate, playful and noble - to be his greatest contribution to the genre.

Please note: The Clarinet Concerto is not performed and David Bellman does not appear during the Coffee Classical Series performance on Thursday.

Choose your preferred date:

Despite German parentage and a childhood in Belgium, Cesar Franck, professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory for nearly two decades, was as French as they came.  So while his most performed work is a Symphony, the most German of musical forms, that Symphony captures the whirlwind character of 19th Century Paris.

The program also features the world premiere of IU professor Claude Baker's piano concerto, From Noon to Starry Night, with pianist Marc-André Hamelin.  Inspired by poetry of Walt Whitman, the concerto is filled with the colors of vibrant spring and the stillness of night.

Choose your preferred date:

Paul’s going solo!  Tony Kishman, one of the stars of Classical Mystery Tour, has created an all-new show celebrating the music of Paul McCartney, the most successful song writer in history, from his iconic Beatles songs to the Wings years and his decades-long solo career.

Choose your preferred date:

Piano powerhouse André Watts, the elder statesman of American pianists, returns for his signature work, Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto.  This beloved concerto often goes by its nickname alone, but Beethoven would not recognize it.  A savvy British publisher dubbed the work “Emperor” to capitalize on its noble character.  After intermission Carlo Rizzi leads the Orchestra through Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, the wildest trip in all of music. 

Please note: Only the fourth and fifth movements of the Berlioz are performed on Thursday's Coffee Classical Series performance.

Choose your preferred date:

The Seventh is a raucous affair - sparky, rhythmic, and unstoppable.  It was written as Beethoven's beloved Vienna was under siege by Napoleon, a man Beethoven once admired so much as to write a symphony in dedication.  Perhaps Beethoven intended the liveliness of this work to stand in contrast to the destruction around him.  Wagner was so taken with the work that he declared it the perfect expression of dance.

Prokofiev wrote his Third Piano Concerto while in France, having fled Russia at the start of the Revolution.  The premiere was given by the Chicago Symphony with Prokofiev, a composer-pianist of the caliber of Rachmaninoff, at the keyboard.  

Choose your preferred date:

Cellist Zuill Bailey makes his ISO debut with Dvorák's Cello Concerto, the most commanding work in the cello repertoire.  Like the "New World" Symphony, Dvorák wrote the Cello Concerto in New York.  But while the "New World" Symphony embraced American music, particularly African American spirituals and Native American songs, the Concerto reveals a homesick Dvorák writing a very European work.  The rest of this all-Dvorák program includes two boisterous tone poems.

Choose your preferred date:

Ashley Brown made such an impression in Guys and Dolls and Irving Berlin: From Ragtime to Ritzes, that Jack invited her back for her own show.  A member of Broadway’s newest generation of leading ladies, Ashley’s powerful voice and charming personality are not to be missed. 

Choose your preferred date:

After its opening depiction of the chaos from which the world was formed, The Creation settles into its more cheerful character, a perfect representation of Haydn's nature and his view of humanity.  With a libretto originally intended for Handel, this choral masterpiece recounts the seven days of creation as presented in the Bible.

Choose your preferred date:

Beethoven took great joy in nature, finding time each day for a walk in the Viennese countryside.  The Sixth Symphony, the "Pastoral," is Beethoven's only symphony to bear descriptive titles, providing the listener with a program of the outdoor scenes Beethoven evokes in each movement.

Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet is one of the world's most sought after, with an expressive range that allows him to play works heroic and poetic with equal skill.  He brings two unique works by Liszt for his first ISO appearance since 1993. 

Choose your preferred date:

2006 Gilmore Award winner Ingrid Fliter returns for Saint-Saëns' Second Piano Concerto.  Saint-Saëns was an elegant composer and a master craftsman whose music simultaneously calls upon the sacred organ tradition and the carefree sounds of fin de siècle Paris.  Debussy, whose trademark was his fierce independence from the musical establishment, never experienced the sea yet somehow managed to capture its essence perfectly in La Mer (The Sea), his orchestral masterpiece and the closest this musical iconoclast ever came to writing a symphony.  Debussy's influence cast a wide net over subsequent musicians, including John Adams, represented on this program by his outlandish Lollapalooza.

Choose your preferred date:

Throughout the Romantic era, symphonies grew more emotionally complex and darker in keeping with the general artistic sensibilities of the 19th Century.  Dvorák broke away from that mold with his Eighth Symphony - cheerful, songful and graceful.  The Symphony also is full of Czech flavor, reminiscent of village folk music, particularly in the last movement.  Young Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa is on the podium. 

Prokofiev spent the middle years of his life in the West, lured by the greater opportunities for creative freedom and financial gain not available in the Soviet Union, but he grew homesick and eventually returned to his homeland.  The Second Violin Concerto, premiered in Madrid, was the last work he wrote while living abroad.  Russian themes can be heard beneath the surface, perhaps because Prokofiev's thoughts had already turned to his birthplace. 

Choose your preferred date:

The Pines of Rome and The Fountains of Rome are two-thirds of Italian composer Ottorino Respighi's Roman Trilogy.  The former depicts four scenes of nature during different times of day while the latter depicts four scenes of man-made beauty from amongst Rome's numerous popular fountains. 

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Music Director Robert Spano, a brilliant American maestro equally adept at conducting established masterpieces and new works, also leads percussionist Colin Currie and the Orchestra in Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara's percussion concerto Incantations, a work about the mysterious world of shamans. 

Choose your preferred date:

The ISO joins forces with the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir for an epic evening of choruses from  beloved Broadway musicals, Hollywood’s Golden Age and today’s cinematic blockbusters, including The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Trek and Avatar.

Choose your preferred date:

Sibelius' Second Symphony is a momentous work that, not unlike Ravel's Bolero, climbs through its four movements to a glorious climax.  Michael Steinberg says that audiences "had never experienced music that begins and builds like this."  An ardent nationlist, Sibelius become a national icon in Finland and was also beloved around the world, seen as one of the last Romantic composers in a musical world that was turning increasingly thorny.

Choose your preferred date:

For the first decades of his compositional life, Shostakovich could not escape the oppressive watch of Stalin.  After cancelling the premiere of his dangerously adventurous Fourth Symphony, Shostakovich wrote his triumphant Fifth.  Historians have long debated whether the work is celebrating or mocking Stalin, but a reviewer labelled it "a Soviet artist's creative answer to just criticism."

Despite the complex harmonies and political undertones of his work, Shostakovich was essentially a classicist when it came to form.  It's fitting to pair his Fifth Symphony with Mozart's Fourth Violin Concerto, which also displays a martial, swaggering character alongside its more charming moments.

Please note: Mozart's Fourth Violin Concerto is not performed and James Ehnes does not appear on the Coffee Classical Series performance on Thursday.

Choose your preferred date:

She’s one of great operatic sopranos of the last quarter century, but Grammy winner Sylvia McNair can also bring cabaret audiences to their feet with her sultry interpretations of the American songbook.  The Four Freshmen, still the kings of vocal jazz after all these years, join her for an evening with the ISO.     

Choose your preferred date:

Indiana's own Joshua Bell performs all over the world, but he's never more at home than when he's performing with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.  After last season's delicious evening of three showpieces for violin, Bell returns with one of the grandest works of them all, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.  The Tchaikovsky continues when Conductor Christoph Eberle makes his ISO debut with the heroic Fourth Symphony, a work the composer intended as a reflection on Beethoven's mighty Fifth.  The similarties are heard right from the start, where Tchaikovsky pounds out a fateful fanfare that unifies the work much like the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth do for that symphony.

Choose your preferred date:

Music representing nature has always been popular, but Vivaldi’s Four Seasons set the gold standard with its exquisite interplay of virtuosic violin solos and lush accompaniments.  ISO Concertmater Zach De Pue leads the Orchestra and plays the solo violin part.  He also joins with ISO Principal Viola Michael Isaac Strauss for Mozart's majestic Sinfonia Concertante.  Mozart loved the viola, often choosing to play it over the violin when he performed his string quartets, but this is his only work to feature the instrument in a solo role.

Please note: The "Autumn" movement from The Four Seasons is not performed on the Coffee Classical Series performance on Thursday.

Choose your preferred date:

Mendelssohn was, like Mozart, a child prodigy as a composer.  While Mozart wrote more works, it is Mendelssohn who displayed greater artistic maturity in the teenage years.  Shortly after turning 20, he took a trip to Scotland that inspired him to write both of the works on this program - the Third Symphony and Fingal's Cave.  The former was inspired by a visit to Mary Queen of Scots' Holyrood Castel and the latter by a popular tourist attraction on the Hebrides Islands.

The Violin Concerto is the only concerto by Sibelius, who began his musical life as a violinist and considered a career as a soloist before turning decisively to composition.  After a plaintive opening that feels like being in the presence of a great storyteller, the second movement is a lilting song and the finale is a jaunty dance.  2002 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis Gold Medal Laureate Barnabás Kelemen performs.

Choose your preferred date:

At the age of 24, when Brahms wrote his First Piano Concerto, the weight of history was upon his shoulders.  Brahms heard Beethoven's Ninth for the first time and came away from it ready to write the next great symphony.  But Brahms struggled and that symphony took decades to finish.  Brahms instead completed his First Piano Concerto, one of the weightiest concertos ever written, with an orchestral accompaniment that at times engulfs the solo piano part.

Richard Strauss was born only a few years after Brahms' First Piano Concerto was published and he lived past the conclusion of the Second World War.  Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, one of Strauss' earlier works, tells the story of the infamous medieval German prankster Till Eulenspiegel and his ultimate demise.

Choose your preferred date:

Back by popular demand, Cirque de la Symphonie brings the magic of cirque to the Hilbert Circle Theatre.  The world’s best aerial flyers, acrobats, jugglers and strongmen perform past favorites and all-new acts in sync with ethereal and awe-inspiring symphonic music.

Choose your preferred date:

The 2010-2011 season concludes with Conductor Laureate Raymond Leppard leading the greatest Symphonic Hit of them all - Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.  With Schiller's famous "Ode to Joy" at its core, this choral symphony is Beethoven's glorious paean to universal brotherhood and harmony.  Consistently ranked as the greatest musical work ever written, this is a piece that can only be experienced one way - live!

Choose your preferred date: