Opening program may be pianist Larry Graham’s farewell orchestra concert — or not

By Peter Alexander

Larry Graham. Photo by Dale Steadman.

The Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra will look both forward and back in their 2015–26 season, which music director Cynthia Katsarelis and the orchestra call “Remembrance” (http://www.promusicacolorado.org).

The season will open Friday and Saturday (Nov. 21-22) with the world premiere of a new work by CU composition competition winner Kurt Mehlenbacher—looking ahead—and end (April 8–9) with Mozart’s Requiem—a work that compels us to look back. In between will be a concert of music by J.S. Bach and Dmitri Shostakovich (Jan. 22-23) that will be part of a two-year festival of all of Shostakovich’s chamber music.

This will be the program most closely tied to the theme of remembrance, since Pro Musica will play the string orchestra version of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8, dedicated to “the victims of fascism and war.”

The opening concert features Larry Graham, a revered former CU piano professor, playing Mozart’s C-minor Piano Concert, K491. The concert will open with Mehlenbacher’s Flying Crooked for chamber orchestra, commissioned by an endowment established by the late Thurston E. Manning, and also include Mozart’s Symphony No. 38 in D major, K504, known as the “Prague” Symphony.