One of Russia's Leading Orchestras to Perform at SBU's Quick Center

The Moscow-based Chamber Orchestra Kremlin will perform at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 6, in the fifth concert of the Friends of Good Music season at St. Bonaventure University’s Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.

Under the leadership of music director Misha Rachlevsky, Chamber Orchestra Kremlin will perform Rossini’s “Sonata for Strings,” Prokofiev’s “Visions Fugitives” (in an arrangement for chamber orchestra by Rudolf Barshai), and Tchaikovsky’s passionate masterpiece “Serenade for Strings, opus 48.”

Founded in 1991, the orchestra consists of some of Russia’s finest young string players and has carved a niche for itself under the creative baton of Rachlevsky, its founder and music director. In addition to an active season of presenting concerts and festivals in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Chamber Orchestra Kremlin tours regularly in North and South America, Europe and the Far East. The orchestra has recorded more than 30 CDs, many of which have won international awards.

After a recent concert at Carnegie Hall, the New York Times proclaimed: “Misha Rachlevsky, the ensemble’s music director, elicited warm, full-blooded and virtuosic playing with colorfully shaped gleaming phrases.”

Concert-goers are in for a “special treat,” said Ludwig Brunner, program director for the Quick Center. “Hearing the plush string sounds of Chamber Orchestra Kremlin on one of their many records made me want to engage this ensemble immediately,” said Brunner. “I’m glad that their 2011 U.S. tour allowed for a stop in Olean between concerts in Vermont and Virginia.”

This performance is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.

Tickets are $20 at full cost, $16 for St. Bonaventure staff and senior citizens, and $5 for students. For tickets and information, call The Quick Center box office at (716) 375-2494.

For each Friends of Good Music performance, The Quick Center will open its galleries one hour before the performance and keep them open throughout the intermission. Regular gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Museum admission is free and open to the public year round. For more information, visit www.sbu.edu/quickcenter.