The Penn’s Woods Music Festival Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Gerardo Edelstein presents a concert of works for chamber orchestra each of which borrows a theme from another work.

The concert begins with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Concerto Grosso, commissioned to honor the 300th anniversary of George Frederic Handel’s birth. The work quotes the theme of the first movement of Handel’s Violin Concerto in D Minor, HWV 371. It is followed by Mozart’s final piano concerto, Piano Concerto No. 27, in B-flat Major, K595 with soloist Steven Smith, emeritus professor of piano. Mozart uses his own song “Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling” as the principal theme for the finale. The concert ends with Franz Schubert’s charming Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major. Schubert was effusive in his admiration of Mozart and comparisons have been made between the themes of the second movement of the symphony and those of the final movement of Mozart’s Violin Sonata in F Major, K. 377.