January 18/19, 2014 – Kuchar/Liu

Saturday, January 18, 2014, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, January 19, 2014, 2:00 p.m.

Theodore Kuchar, Music Director and Conductor
Rong-Huey Liu, oboe

Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings
Corigliano: Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra
Mozart: Symphony 41 “Jupiter”

Led by Maestro Theodore Kuchar, this program features two favorites of the classical repertoire, Tchaikovsky’s lovely Serenade for Strings and Mozart’s brilliant final symphony, the “Jupiter.” RCO Principal Oboist Rong-Huey Liu is also featured in a modern masterpiece, the Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra by American composer John Corigliano.

Rong-Huey Liu

Hailed by her colleagues as “a most expressive oboist with a beautiful dark sound” and by conductor Tomasz Golka as “…. a phenomenal oboist,” Taiwanese-American Rong-Huey Liu is currently the principal oboist for the Reno Chamber Orchestra, Long Beach Symphony and the Riverside County Philharmonic, acting principal for the Fresno Philharmonic and is a member of the west coast touring orchestra for Andrea Bocelli and a frequent guest oboist for the Ojai Summer Music Festival.

After winning first place in both the Taichung Regional Oboe Competition and the Taiwan National Oboe Competition in 1989, Rong-Huey was invited to study oboe in the United States with Lynn Jacquin at the Walnut Hill School of Arts in Massachusetts. At the school’s audition, she was selected to give a concerto performance at the Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall. Later that year, Rong-Huey won first prize from the Harvard Musical Association and, at 18, gave her first full oboe recital and was awarded a scholarship from the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts. Read More

Theodore Kuchar

Theodore Kuchar, one of the most prolifically recorded conductors of the past decade, appears on over 100 compact discs for the Naxos, Brilliant Classics, Ondine and Marco Polo labels. For the past 17 years, he has served as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of two of Europe’s preeminent orchestras, the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. He presently also serves as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfonica de Venezuela and the Fresno Philharmonic. An avid chamber musician, he served as the Artistic Director of The Australian Festival of Chamber Music (1990-2006), and has served as the Artistic Director of the Nevada Chamber Music Festival since 2005. Since 2004, he has served as Resident Conductor at the Kent/Blossom Music Festival, the educational institution established by the late George Szell, in cooperation with The Cleveland Orchestra. Read More.

Program Notes Coming Soon

The fourth movement of Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Karl Bohm.