DePauw Orchestra to Present ArtsFest Concert Sunday Afternoon

October 28, 2009, Greencastle, Ind. — The DePauw University Orchestra continues its concert season with a 3 p.m. performance this Sunday, November 1. The program, will take place in Kresge Auditorium of the Green Center for the Performing Arts and is free and open to the public, will feature two works in which composers (Mozart and Shostakovich) tempted fate by creating art that confronts external forces. The concert will mark the opening day of "ArtsFest 2009: Art & Power."

"Most notably," according to Orcenith Smith, director of the DePauw Orchestra, "is the "Symphony No. 5" by the great twentieth century Russian composer, Dmitri Shostakovich, who was at risk of falling out of favor and other danger with the Stalinist government of the 1930s. Earlier, he had written an opera that was considered by the government to be 'over an artistic line', so, he responded by creating a symphonic work that satisfied the government critics, and also created a groundswell of support from his general audience; it is, therefore, a fascinating work that operated on two levels at the same time."

"Symphony No. 5" was seen as "A Soviet artist's reply to just criticism."

Also on the program is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's overture to the opera The Marriage of Figaro, which is scheduled to be presented by the DePauw Opera company in March 2010. "The French play on which the opera was based was banned in Vienna in the mid-1780s because of its satire of the aristocracy," says Professor Smith, "but the opera found little obstacle. We invite our audience to experience both these works in the context of ArtsFest's topic this year."

Visit the DePauw University School of Music, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary, here.

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