Philharmonic closes season with the classics

Spartanburg Philharmonic Orchestra closes the season with a concert this weekend.

Guest conductor Daniel Alfred Wachs, guest composer Kati Agocs and soprano Rebecca Turner join the orchestra in a performance titled "Miniatures and Masterpieces."

The audience will hear old favorites by Johann Sebastian Bach, Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner. It also will be treated to a piece by Kati Agocs titled "By the Streams of Babylon." The concert is at 7 p.m. Saturday at Twichell Auditorium, Converse College.

Wachs is stepping in to lead the orchestra in the absence of conductor Sarah Ioannides, who is expecting twins and unable to travel. The two met when they were students at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

"Knowing that I have already conducted several of the works on this program, Sarah has entrusted me with it and I am deeply honored," Wachs said. "We have been friends and colleagues for nearly 15 years now."

He said the music is varied in length, but all the pieces are great. The selections include Suite No. 3 by Bach, "Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer)" by Mahler and "Siegfried Idyll" by Wagner, who wrote it for his wife at the birth of their son.

"How appropriate is it that Sarah's own orchestra will be performing this work as we await word and pray for the arrival of her own twins," Wachs said.

Turner, associate professor of voice and director of opera at Converse College, will sing the Mahler music. This is her first performance with the orchestra.

Agocs, composer in residence for the National Youth Orchestra of Canada for 2010, will perform her piece "By the Streams of Babylon" as part of the orchestra's "Meet the Composer" program. She will sing her music with Donna Gallagher.

Agocs met Ioannides when the two were in the graduate program at The Juilliard School in New York. They have been friends ever since.

"Sarah conducted the premiere performance of my very first work for large ensemble, a string orchestra piece called 'Principia,' back in 1998 when I first got to Juilliard," Agocs said.