Beethoven works end War + Peace festival

If you haven’t seen either of the first two Eugene Symphony concerts that are part of its ambitious, monthlong Counterpoint: War + Peace festival, tonight is your final chance.

The show comes on the heels of the Nov. 17 concert, featuring pianist Joyce Yang playing Sergei Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Dimitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, the “Leningrad,” and Nov. 22’s centerpiece performance of Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” with Tom Brokaw. Today’s third and final concert at 8 p.m. at the Hult Center’s Silva Concert Hall brings us Ludwig van Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, to be followed by Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the “Eroica.”

Tonight is also your last chance to catch the symphony until its next performance of Astor Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons” on Jan. 19 and its Disney in Concert show on Jan. 22.

The Beethoven concert is part of a couple of big offerings in the classical world this coming week.

On Sunday, the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance welcomes 17-year-old piano prodigy Conrad Tao, who will perform in a solo piano concert at 3 p.m. at Beall Concert Hall (see details, Page D3).

Another concert, the Oregon Mozart Players Messiah Sing-a-long, which was scheduled for Tuesday night at the Hult Center, has been postponed.

The Eugene Symphony’s Beethoven Triple Concerto performance includes three rising stars of the classical music world: violinist Chee-Yun, cellist Joshua Roman and pianist Inon Barnatan.

Chee-Yun, who earlier this year performed at the Oregon Bach Festival, will be performing on an 18th century Stradivarius known as the “Ex-Strauss”, on loan through the Samsung Foundation of Culture of Korea and the Stradivari Society of Chicago.

Chee-Yun recently performed at the Kennedy Center’s “Salute to Slava” gala honoring Mistislav Rosropovich and also performed with Michael Tilson Thomas in the inaugural season of Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall.

Described by London’s Evening Standard as “a true poet of the keyboard,” Tel Aviv native Barnatan has quickly earned a national reputation for performing a wide range of repertoire.

In 2009, he was awarded a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, in recognition of the important contribution he has made to the American music scene since moving to the United States in 2006.

Roman became the Seattle Symphony’s principal cellist at the tender age of 22 in 2006, and has since performed duos with Yo-Yo Ma and been dubbed a “classical rock star.”

Beethoven’s Third Symphony was composed in 1804 and first performed in 1805. It was originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte, whom Beethoven then admired as an exponent of the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution. But when Napoleon anointed himself emperor in 1805, the composer tore up the symphonic score’s title page in a rage and renamed it “Sinfonia Eroica,” Italian for “Heroic Symphony.”