Fox Valley Philharmonic opens with Mozart
The Fox Valley Philharmonic will perform an all Mozart concert on Sunday, Sept. 28 featuring Thomas Jostlein, assistant principal horn of the New York Philharmonic and Edita Eppolito, piano virtuoso from Batavia. The concert is entitled "Genius Interrupted" because of Mozart's untimely death at the age of 35.
Jostlein was named assistant principal horn of the New York Philharmonic in September 2007. He previously held positions with the Honolulu, Omaha, Richmond and Kansas City symphony orchestras. He won the grand prize at the Hugo Kauder Music Competition at Yale University in 2005 which earned him the opportunity of performing a recital at the Merkin Concert Hall in New York City. He was born in New York but raised in Naperville in a musical family. His father, who is a particle physicist at Fermilab, plays in the cello section of the Fox Valley Philharmonic; Barbara Currie, his sister, is fourth horn in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra; and his wife, Tricia, formerly was the principal horn of the Omaha Symphony and the Des Moines Metro Opera.
On the September program, Jostlein will join the Fox Valley Philharmonic in performing Mozart's "Concerto in Eb Major, K. 370b & 371."
"Although the Concert Rondo, K. 371, has long been a favorite performance piece of horn players around the world, in 1990, an additional 60 bars was discovered by scholars and added to the score," noted Fox Valley Philharmonic music director Jason R. Palmer. "Our performance will not only include the additional portion of the Rondo, but also an Allegro movement, K. 370b, which Mozart scholars believe was to be the first movement of a horn concerto begun by Mozart in 1781 which concluded with the Concerto Rondo.
"The reason this Allegro movement has only recently come to light is because on the 100th anniversary of Mozart's birth, his son Carl separated the manuscript into various parts and distributed the parts to friends," Palmer said. "Most of the fragments survived but over time became part of no fewer than six different collections housed throughout the world which posed a problem for scholars in their attempt to recreate Mozart's work."
Edita Eppolito earned a masters of music degree from the Music Academy of Lithuania. Eppolito has performed more than 50 concerts in Europe and has 15 years of experience as a piano teacher and accompanist in Lithuania where she was a member of the European Piano Teachers Association. She is the accompanist for the Bartlett High School choral department as well as the Elgin Children's Chorus. Eppolito will be the featured soloist on Mozart's final piano concerto the "Piano Concert #27 in Bb Major, K. 595."
The Fox Valley Philharmonic is a community orchestra sponsored by The Fox Valley Academy of Music Performance which also operates the Fox Valley Youth Symphony Orchestras and the Access to Music program for underprivileged children. Members of the orchestra represent 18 communities including Aurora, Batavia, Carol Stream, Chicago, Downers Grove, Elgin, Geneva, Hoffman Estates, Montgomery, Naperville, North Aurora, Oswego, Pingree Grove, Plano, St. Charles, Sterling, Westchester and Western Springs.
The concert will begin at 3 p.m. in the Crimi Auditorium at Aurora University. Tickets for the concert are $18 for adults and $13 for students/seniors and may be purchased by calling Jamie Palmer, executive director of The Fox Valley Academy of Music Performance, at (630) 879-8018.