MOSES LAKE — The Central Basin Community Concert Association is finishing up its 70th season in a big way. 

“(We’re bringing) somewhere between 65 and 70 orchestra members,” said Gonzaga Symphony Orchestra Director Kevin Hekmatpanah. That may be the largest number of performers ever to take the stage at the Wallenstien Theater, CBCCA Vice President Carla McKean said. 

In a departure from the CBCCA’s usual practice, the concert will be held on a Sunday afternoon, so the players can get back to Spokane for Monday classes, McKean said. 

The performance will be in two parts, Hekmatpanah said. The first will consist of Gaetano Rossini’s overture to Semiramide, followed by the overture to the Poet and the Peasant by Franz von Suppé and concluding with the dramatic prelude to Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger. The selections were chosen to show the wide spectrum of things that an orchestra can do.

“Each one in itself is like a self-contained work,” Hekmatpanah said. “It usually starts with something slower and then (gets) a little bit more dramatic and virtuoso, and then something contrasting in the middle and ends with big splash.” 

The second half of the show is what Hekmatpanah described as the meat and potatoes of the program, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. Rachmaninoff’s music was mostly written to showcase his own piano expertise, Hekmatpanah said, with a sweeping romanticism and sentimentality influenced by Tchaikovsky. The Second Piano Concerto was kind of a special case, Hekmatpanah added. 

“He had written a symphony that had been really trashed by the critics,” Hekmatpanah said. “Rachmaninoff went into a big depression and felt he could never compose again, and … he came out of that depression by writing this piece. So it was the piece that turned the corner for him, and it became one of his most famous pieces.” 

That concerto will feature WSU music professor and piano virtuosa Yoon-Wha Roh. It’s one of her favorite pieces, she said. 

“It’s a great, passionate piece,” Roh said. “I remember going to Russia a long time ago, and the moment I landed, looking at the land, I thought, ‘Oh, this is where the melody came from.’” 

The concerto is a demanding one for the pianist, but the main melody is very simple, Roh said, and conveys the composer’s feelings strongly. 

“Since this is Rachmaninoff’s victory concerto after his long suffering, I (hope it will) touch some (listener’s) heart that whatever that they are going through, they can relate and hear it as their encouragement,” she said. 

Classical music is an intimidating area for many audiences, who may think of it as inaccessible or even snobbish. But, Hekmatpanah said, underlying classical music are themes everyone can identify with. 

“The emotions that are presented in classical music are universal,” he said. “They are no different than the emotions that we've all felt at all times. And music has a way of transcending countries (and) transcending time periods. If you think of Shakespeare, it's very much written in the Renaissance period, so when you hear that English, it can be off-putting. But the emotions and the topics that Shakespeare is discussing - they're universal. They're universal human conditions that transcend countries and time periods. Classical music is the same.” 

Gonzaga Symphony Orchestra 

April 13 

Doors Open: 3:30 p.m.

Concert: 4 p.m. 

$5 music students
$30 general admission

Special pricing available for families.
www.CommunityConcertsML.com 

    Piano virtuosa and Washington State University music professor Yoon-Wha Roh will perform Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the Gonzaga Symphony Orchestra on April 13.