Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The Richmond Symphony (RSO) will return to the Jarman Auditorium stage at Longwood University this month for a special Symphony Series performance featuring a mix of contemporary and classical works. 

The concert will be held on Friday, Feb. 24, at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public; tickets are not required. Doors will open at 7 p.m. and seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. 

The program will begin with Édouard Lalo’s mesmerizing Symphonie espagnole in D minor, Op. 21, featuring violin soloist María Dueñas, an acclaimed virtuoso of her generation. The program will conclude with Johannes Brahms’ haunting Symphony No. 3 in F major, the shortest of the composer’s four symphonies, but the one in which his distinct orchestral language and emotional range reach their full maturity.

“We are so excited to be able to present the RSO at Longwood again this year,” said Dr. Charles Kinzer, professor of music at Longwood. “The third movement of the Brahms symphony is one of the most famous and beautiful Viennese waltz melodies in the entire repertory of classical music. To hear and see such glorious music performed live is truly an uplifting experience, and I hope that many in the Farmville community will come out and join us.” 

The concert is underwritten by the John Cook Cole Symphony Fund of the Longwood University Foundation. For more than a decade, the RSO has performed at Longwood through a partnership established by the late Dr. John Cook, a 1952 alumnus and benefactor of the Cook-Cole College of Arts and Sciences. The endowed partnership provides for one performance each academic year. The concert is hosted by Longwood’s Department of Music and supported in part by a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.  

The last Richmond Symphony performance at Longwood was in the fall of 2021. 

“Students and our campus community look forward to hosting the Richmond Symphony at Longwood as one of the cultural highlights of the academic year,” said Longwood President W. Taylor Reveley IV. “Bringing world-class musicians to campus and being able to experience the majesty of the orchestral experience with our students, friends and neighbors is a deeply enriching gift for which we are grateful.”

Parking for the concert is available in the Wheeler Lot on Griffin Boulevard. For more information about this concert, call the Longwood Department of Music at (434) 395-2504 or email music@longwood.edu.