The Orchestra at Temple Square’s 2016 Fall Concert, “Dreams and Dances,” will take place in the Tabernacle on Temple Square on Friday, October 14 and Saturday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m. Igor Gruppman will conduct the all-volunteer, nationally recognized orchestra. Tickets for the concert are free and will be available beginning Tuesday, September 20, 2016 at 10:00 a.m.

The fall concert will open with three selections from Felix Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “Overture,” “Nocturne,” and “Wedding March,” inspired by Shakespeare’s play. The “Overture” was composed in 1826 which Mendelssohn was only 17 years of age; the “Nocturne” and the famous “Wedding March” were part of additional pieces commissioned by the King of Prussia much later in 1842 to be incorporated into his “Overture” during performances of Shakespeare’s play.

English composer Ralph Vaughn Williams’s The Lark Ascending, with Vesna Gruppman as soloist a musical composition re-scored by the composer in 1921 for solo violin and orchestra, will complete the first half. Vesna Gruppman, critically acclaimed for her impeccable taste and beautiful tone, is a violin soloist and professor of violin and viola at the Rotterdam Conservatory. She was a former professor at Brigham Young University and an original member of the Orchestra at Temple.

The second half of the concert will open with Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s lively Slavonic Dances (opus 46, Dances 1 and 2; opus 72, Dances 2 and 8) which are today among the composer’s most memorable works. This will be followed by the Argentine tango composer Astor Piazzolla’s beautiful Oblivion, with solo by Vesna Gruppman as soloist. The concert will conclude with one of the most famous musical compositions of French composer, Maurice Ravel, the one-movement orchestral piece Boléro, which was based on the musical form and Spanish dance called bolero. 

The Orchestra at Temple Square was formed in 1999 under the direction of Gordon B. Hinckley, then president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Its charter as an all-volunteer musical organization is to accompany the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and to present two symphonic concerts of its own each year.

Igor Gruppman was named conductor of the Orchestra at Temple Square in 2003. He enjoys a career as a violin soloist, conductor, concertmaster, and chamber musician and has appeared in the great European capitals and in the major cities of North America, Israel, and New Zealand. He has been a frequent guest with such orchestras as the St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Philharmonic and has worked with conductors Valery Gergiev, Sir Georg Solti, Mstislav Rostropovich, Sir Colin Davis, Christoph Eschenbach and Bernard Haitink. In addition to his duties with the Orchestra at Temple Square, he is currently concert master of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra.

Tickets for the 2016 concert:

• Tickets are free for this event, but required. There is a limit of four tickets per person.
• Tickets will be available beginning at 10 a.m. (Mountain) on Tuesday, September 20, 2016 at lds.org/events or by calling 801-570-0800 (locally) or toll-free 1-866-537-8457.
• Admission to this event is limited to those ages eight and older.

Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. each evening of the event, and patrons should be in their seats by 7:15 p.m.