I. Masquerade: Symphony of Shadows

Concert I

Masquerade:

Symphony of Shadows

Sunday, October 18, 2026 | 4:00 pm

Burnt Store Presbyterian Church

About this Concert

Join Maestro Richard Stoelzel, Concertmaster Ming Gao, and the talented Philharmonic musicians for an exhilarating opening concert of thrilling, theatrical masterworks. This spellbinding program explores the supernatural, the dramatic, and the delightfully eerie through iconic orchestral showpieces. Whether you’re discovering these works for the first time or hearing beloved favorites again, this program promises an unforgettable musical journey.

Program

Act I

Ride of the Valkyries (Richard Wagner): Originally part of the opera Die Walküre, this high-octane masterpiece is famous for its thunderous brass theme. Wagner actually tried to ban standalone concert performances of it during his lifetime—a rule concertgoers are undoubtedly glad was eventually broken!

Preferred Seating .. $85 *

General Seating ….. $70

Student ………………. $10

Music Student …….. Complimentary

* Preferred Seating is located in designated premium seating areas closest to the orchestra.

Danse Macabre (Camille Saint-Saëns): According to French superstition, Death appears at midnight every Halloween, calling the dead to dance for him on their graves. Saint-Saëns brilliantly evokes rattling bones using a xylophone, while a solo violin plays a tune tuned deliberately out of tune to represent the devil’s fiddle.
In the Hall of the Mountain King (Edvard Grieg): Written as incidental music for Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, this piece is a masterclass in musical acceleration. It begins as a sneaky, tiptoeing theme in the low strings and spirals into a chaotic, breathless stampede.
Funeral March of a Marionette (Charles Gounod): Best known today as the iconic theme to Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Gounod originally wrote this quirky, tongue-in-cheek piece as a musical joke about a broken-hearted wooden puppet carried to its grave.

Act II

Dracula Suite: Overture, Parade of the Ghouls, March of the Pumpkins (Anthony DiLorenzo): A thrilling modern cinematic journey that brings vampiric lore and ghoulish spectacle to life with rich, contemporary orchestral color.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Paul Dukas): Immortalized by Walt Disney’s Fantasia, this tone poem tells the Goethe-inspired tale of a mischievous apprentice who tries out his master’s magic broom spells with disastrously flooded results. Keep an ear out for the bassoons carrying the stubborn, marching water-bucket theme!
March to the Scaffold from Symphonie Fantastique (Hector Berlioz): Berlioz composed this hallucinatory movement while imagining his own execution for a crime born of unrequited love. The music mimics a heavy, plodding march to the guillotine, punctuated by a sudden, violent slash of the brass representing the falling blade.

The Florida Philharmonic