The UMD Symphony Orchestra’s opening concert of the season features faculty artist Evelyn Elsing performing Schumann’s Cello Concerto.

This piece has been a long and enthusiastically awaited collaboration for Elsing and James Ross who are friends and colleagues. Ross says, “I can imagine no richer way to celebrate Evy’s decades of fabulous teaching and musicianship at Maryland than with this introspective masterpiece! ” The beloved Ms. Elsing will be retiring from the School of Music faculty in 2014.

The program is rounded out with Berlioz’s Corsair Overture, op. 21, Wagner’s “Prelude and Love Death” from Tristan and Isolde and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s orchestral tour-de-force Foreign Bodies from 2001.

Evelyn Elsing has been a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland since 1974 and is the first recipient of the Barbara K. Steppel Memorial Faculty Fellowship in Cello in the School of Music.