News Release

The Hopkins Symphony Orchestra continues its 2003-2004 season with "Sorcerer's Solstice," featuring guest pianist Inna Faliks, at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 6, in Shriver Hall, located on Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St. in Baltimore.

Julien Benichou leads the orchestra of Johns Hopkins students, faculty and staff and Baltimore-area residents in a dramatic program that evokes the supernatural. Faliks is soloist in Liszt's "Totentanz" ("Dance of Death") and Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini." The spiritual theme continues with the "Ritual Fire Dance" from Manuel de Falla's "El Amor Brujo" ("Love, the Magician") and "La Noche de los Mayas" ("The Night of the Mayas") by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas.

Performing the Liszt and Rachmaninoff works on the same program is no coincidence. Rachmaninoff based his beloved Rhapsody on Liszt's visionary work. Each piece is a theme and variations for piano and orchestra, each quotes the ancient "Dies Irae" chant that describes the Last Judgment, and each is thrilling in its passion and virtuosity.

The Ritual Fire Dance, another audience favorite, conjures up a gypsy woman trying to exorcise her dead husband's jealous ghost. "The Night of the Mayas," originally a film score, depicts the proud and quietly ceremonious Mayan people and their home on the mysterious, enchanted Yucatan Peninsula.

By the time Inna Faliks immigrated from Odessa, Ukraine, to the United States at age 10, she had already composed an opera and played a solo piano recital in Rome. At 15, she made her debut with the Chicago Symphony. She studied with Ann Schein and Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory. Now 25, she has taken first prizes in the International Hilton Head Piano Competition, the Val Tidone International Competition (Italy), the National Federation of Music Clubs Competition, and the Yale Gordon Competition at Peabody. She has appeared throughout the United States and in France, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, and Japan. Her first CD will be on the Connoisseur Society label. Her playing has been described as "vibrant," "riveting," and "brilliant," with "passion and playfulness, warmly poetic."

A free pre-concert talk by WBJC's Jonathan Palevsky starts at 2 p.m.

Tickets are $10 for general admission; $8 for senior citizens and students; $8 for Johns Hopkins faculty, staff and alumni; free for Johns Hopkins students with ID. Free parking on campus. For more information, call 410-516-6542, e-mail hso@jhu.edu or visit http://www.jhu.edu/~jhso/.

Upcoming performances by the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra include a free concert for children and families on March 6, "Let's Play!" on March 7, and "Open Spaces" on April 17, as well as chamber music concerts on February 15 and April 4.