BANGOR – It will be a busy weekend for the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, with Saturday night’s annual fundraising Symphony Soiree and Sunday’s concert, set for 3 p.m. at the Collins Center for the Arts in Orono. But in between the evening gowns and champagne and rehearsing Liszt and Tchaikovsky, there are five young musicians in the Bangor Symphony Youth Orchestra who will get a rare chance to work with a master of the craft.
For the third time since 2010, the BSO will offer a master class on Friday evening with one of its soloists as part of the Maurice P. King Endowment Fund. In 2010 it was cellist and MacArthur fellow Alisa Weilerstein, and last year it was violinist Martina Filjak. In 2012, it’s Israeli violist Gilad Karni, a former member of the New York Philharmonic who currently performs with the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich, Germany, who will perform Rosza’s “Violin Concerto” on Sunday with the BSO. For violinists Rachael Szwec and Helena Tatgenhorst, violists James Van Kirk and Caleb Halvorson and cellist Katie Buerger, all Bangor-area teenagers and BSYO members, the tips and technique they’ll learn from Karni will stay with them for a long time.
Halvorson and Van Kirk study privately with BSO principal violist Laura Gallucci, a Winterport resident, who said master classes are among the most valuable experiences a young musician can have….