Young sounds will take lead at Symphony Orchestra concert

Four talented young musicians will feature in the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka’s Young Soloists’ Concert on August 11. They are Nuwan Senaratne, piano, Satish Casie Chetty, violin, Dhanushi Wijeyakulasuriya, soprano, and the pianist and composer Eshantha J. Peiris who will conduct the premiere of a new work. Ananda Dabare will conduct the concert.

Nuwan Senaratne has won several competitions including the piano category of the Sixth Biennial Concerto Competition of the Symphony Orchestra in 2004. He will be the soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 composed in a Mozartian style in 1895. Beethoven was himself the soloist in Vienna at the first performance the same year.

Satish Casie Chetty who is 17 was the winner of the ‘Young Musician of the Year’ contest of 2006 organized by the Institute of Western Music and Speech. He is a member of the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka and was leader of the Orchestra at their October 2005 concert. He has been leader several times since then for Camerata Musica. Satish will be the soloist in Beethoven’s charming Romance in F major for Violin and Orchestra written around 1800, six years before his Violin Concerto. Satish will also play the dazzling violin solo of Tchaikovsky’s Russian Dance’ from Swan Lake, which is very seldom played in the ballet because of its difficulty.

Dhanushi Wijeyakulasuriya, a 17-year-old student of Ladies’ College, has won many singing prizes and did well in the vocal category of the Concerto Competition of the Symphony Orchestra in 2006. A soprano with “a true passion for opera”, she will perform Batti batti from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Musetta’s Waltz Song from Puccini’s La Boheme and The Laughing Song from Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus. She will also perform a song by Victor Herbert.

As a teenager Eshantha J.Peiris was the soloist with SOSL in Mendelssohn’s piano concerto No. 1, and Rachmaninoff’s 2nd piano concerto. At New York University he graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Music degree in classical piano performance in 2006, and is currently completing a master’s degree there in Music Composition and Scoring. As a composer, Eshantha writes music that spans a stylistic spectrum ranging from traditional-classical to jazz to rock to fusion.

Eshantha will conduct the premiere of his composition '26/12/2004: South-East Asia’, for symphony orchestra and traditional drums, which is dedicated to all those who lost loved ones during the 2004 tsunami. It is his personal reaction to the catastrophe and a self-reminder of the things in life that are beyond our immediate control. He hopes it might serve as a timely commemoration of the catastrophe that, at least briefly, saw us join together as a nation in providing immediate relief for our fellow citizens.

The concert on Saturday August 11 will be at 7 p.m. at Ladies’ College Hall. The sponsor for the 12th consecutive year is HSBC. Tickets are available from Titus Stores, Liberty Plaza or the SOSL office, Tel.2501209.