University Symphony Orchestra

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Kenneth Kiesler, conductor
Ana María Otamendi and Elena Lacheva, piano

PROGRAM

Don Giovanni Overture, Mozart
Don Juan, Strauss
Concerto for Two Pianos, Mozart
Tannhauser Overture, Wagner

Join the University Symphony Orchestra for its final concert of 2025 featuring brilliant and dramatic music from three centuries, and journeys from passion and desire to transcendence and redemption. International artists and SMTD faculty members Ana María Otamendi and Elena Lacheva are the special guest soloists in Mozart’s witty and elegant Concerto for Two Pianos.

Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture introduces the legendary libertine whose tale blends danger, seduction, and moral reckoning. The program continues with one of the most virtuosic and electrifying works in all of orchestral music, Don Juan, Strauss’s brilliant, vivid, and virtuosic tone poem which reimagines the same archetypal figure: bold, impulsive, and ultimately striving for transcendence.

The evening and the USO’s fall season come to a grand finale with Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture, another orchestral showpiece centered on the powerful tensions between earthly desire, longing, and spiritual redemption.