Adé Williams

Violin prodigy takes up the bow for BRSO’s ‘Perspectives’

Next Thursday, Jan. 28, the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra will deliver its third installment in the Masterworks Series with “Perspectives: Mendelssohn, Bruch and Hayden,” a series of musical performances written by composers whose lifetimes range from the early Romantic period to the modern day. In a range of styles that explore the composers’ musical interpretations of people and places, 18-year-old violin prodigy Adé Williams will join performances of Paul Hayden’s “Clara,” Max Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy in E-flat major, Op. 46,” and Felix Mendelssohn’s “Symphony No. 4 in A major ‘Italian,’ Op. 90.” A native of Chicago, Williams won her first national concerto competition at age eight.

Hayden is an LSU graduate whose “Clara” will premier at the 7:30 p.m. River Center event. Inspired by 19th-century pianist and composer Clara Schumann, the wife of famed composer Robert Schumann, Hayden’s piece reimagines excerpts from Clara’s own chord progressions and compositions to place her ideas in a modern context.

Bruch, who borrowed much from fellow German Mendolssohn, is credited with penning one of the most popular concertos of any violinist’s repertoire, “Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26,” but his “Scottish Fantasy” also makes use of the work of another famous artist—the poet Robert Burns’ tune from “Scots Wha Hae,” a song that was for centuries sung as a national anthem of Scotland.

Mendelssohn’s name now rings among the most popular composers of the Romantic era, famous for his dainty musical effects and a penchant for being just as inspired by nature as by other musicians like Johann Sebastian Bach. His Symphony No. 4 gets its color from his tour of Italy from 1829-1831, an experience he once called “the supreme joy in life.”

To purchase tickets, call 225-383-0500 or visit brso.org.