UVic Symphony Orchestra: Colours of the Spheres
Program
Anna Meredith: Nautilus
Michelle Wolfenden: New Composition for Flute and Orchestra
— Commissioned work, 2025 UVic Orchestral Reading Prize
Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915
— Soprano solo: Olivia Pryce-Digby
Alexander Scriabin: Rêverie
Amy Beach: Alla Siciliana (from Symphony No. 4, “Gaelic”)
Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759, “Unfinished”
Performed by
UVic Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Ajtony Csaba
With Gabriel Ferreras, graduate student conductor
Soprano soloist: Olivia Pryce-Digby (2025 UVic Concerto Competition Winner)
Blending bold contemporary voices with evocative classics, Colours of the Spheres presents a vibrant cross-section of musical imagination. The concert opens with Anna Meredith’s Nautilus, a propulsive, rhythm-driven work whose energy and electrifying sonorities immediately seize the ear.
This is followed by a brand-new composition by Michelle Wolfenden—winner of the 2025 UVic Orchestral Reading Prize—whose work for flute and orchestra reveals an emerging musical voice of colour, curiosity, and inventiveness.
Soprano Olivia Pryce-Digby, the 2025 UVic Concerto Competition winner, brings expressive warmth to Samuel Barber’s deeply nostalgic Knoxville: Summer of 1915.
The second part of the program opens with Scriabin’s atmospheric Rêverie, a brief yet dream-soaked glimpse into his evolving mystical sound world. Amy Beach’s lyrical and graceful Alla Siciliana—drawn from her richly romantic Gaelic Symphony—offers a moment of delicate poise before the evening concludes with Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, a masterpiece whose emotional depth and unresolved mystery continue to inspire listeners nearly two centuries after its creation.
A program of colour, pulse, atmosphere, and imagination—illuminated by the UVic Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Ajtony Csaba.
More info and tickets:
https://events.uvic.ca/music/event/99896-uvic-symphony-orchestra-colours-of-the-spheres