VYOA Blog

The Vermont Youth Orchestra and VYO Chorus will join together May 5 for a spring finale featuring masterpieces with themes of transformation and journeys into the unknown.

The concert takes place at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 5 at the Flynn Center, with conductors Jeffrey Domoto and Dr. Jeffrey Buettner. The VYO and VYO Chorus will present Ralph Vaughan Williams’ rarely performed masterpiece Toward the Unknown Region and Hector Berlioz’s Royal Hunt and Storm, among other selections.

Williams’ Toward the Unknown Region puts to music Walt Whitman’s poem “Darest Thou Now, O Soul.” The Royal Hunt and Storm is a symphonic interlude from Berlioz’s opera, Les Troyens, representing the fateful love of Trojan hero Aeneus and Dido, queen of Carthage, and the power of destiny.

In addition, featured soloist and Montpelier violinist Lydia Herrick will perform Johan Svendsen’s Romance in G Major, a lyrical, elegant piece that is one of Svendsen’s most popular compositions. The concert concludes with Paul Hindemith’s orchestral showpiece, the Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber.

This is the second year the VYO and VYO Chorus have performed together for the season finale.

“This is an inspiring program and a fitting end to a spectacular season,” said Jeffrey Domoto, VYOA music director. The final concert is also bittersweet as it’s the last time these students will play together before some of them move on to college and new opportunities, Domoto said. “It’s always an emotional time.”

The event also features the debut of a VYOA conducting apprentice and the awarding of the Hermance Prize — a $1,000 award given to one of the five 2012-13 VYO senior soloists, in memory of pianist Harry Hermance — and the Ann & Eliot Weathers Scholarship.

Tickets are $15 for adults/seniors; $10 for students. To purchase concert tickets, call 802-86-Flynn or visit www.flynntix.org.