Robert Moody, conductor

Kevin Zhu, violin

Ludwig van Beethoven: Overture to Fidelio

Leonard Bernstein: Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2

Love is in the air and in the music.

Who doesn’t love a debut? This concert has two of them: violinist Kevin Zhu, a first-prize winner at the Paganini International Competition, and conductor Robert Moody, longtime music director of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra.

The enduring power of love is one of the central tenets in the Ludwig van Beethoven opera Fidelio — whose overture opens the program.

Leonard Bernstein composed his Serenade after reading Plato’s Symposium, which explores the different forms of love and its many roles in society. Though not a literal program, Bernstein provides an inspired musical framework in the five-movement work for violin soloist and orchestra.

An enduring Romantic, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 1907 Symphony No. 2 is a work firmly planted in the nineteenth century—and he makes no apologies for it. Few could spin a tune like Rachmaninoff — unforgettable and unfolding — with an orchestration to match.

This concert also includes a performance on Sunday, February 15, at 2:00 pm at the Centennial Concert Hall.