For Immediate Release: Press Contacts: October 28, 2015 Eileen Chambers, 312-294-3092 Rachelle Roe, 312-294-3090 Photos Available By Request
[email protected] CONDUCTOR ZUBIN MEHTA LEADS THE ISRAEL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA IN OPENING CONCERT OF THE 2015/16 ORCHESTRAS SERIES AT SYMPHONY CENTER Program Includes Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, Ravel’s La valse and a work by Josef Bardanashvili Sunday, November 15, at 7 p.m. CHICAGO—The first concert of the 2015/16 Symphony Center Presents (SCP) PowerShares QQQ Orchestras series features the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) led by conductor Zubin Mehta, who is the orchestra’s Music Director for Life. The IPO, which is Israel’s premiere cultural ambassador, celebrates its 80th anniversary in the 2015/16 season. Mehta leads a diverse program of works by Beethoven, Ravel and contemporary Israeli composer Josef Bardanashvili on Sunday, November 15, at 7 p.m. at Symphony Center. The concert marks the IPO’s fifth Symphony Center appearance since 1996 with their most recent appearance led by Mehta taking place in 2014. Mehta, an acclaimed Beethoven interpreter, leads the IPO in the composer’s monumental Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) as the program’s centerpiece. The sweeping work opens with an intense and powerful first movement that leads to a brooding funeral march, which hints at Beethoven’s struggle with his increasing deafness, before it reaches a brilliant finale. The IPO program opens with the symphonic poem A Journey to the End of the Millennium based on the critically acclaimed opera of the same name by Georgian-born, Israeli composer Josef Bardanashvili (b.