NEWS RELEASE

Contact: David West (west@nsula.edu )
News Bureau
Northwestern State University
Natchitoches, LA 71497
(318) 357-6466

9/22/2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NATCHITOCHES -The Natchitoches Northwestern Symphony Orchestra will feature pianist Dr. Nikita Fitenko at its opening concert of the 2006-07 season Thursday, Oct. 5 at 7:30 p.m. in Magale Recital Hall. Tickets are $10. NSU and Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts students are admitted free with I.D.

The orchestra, conducted by Dr. Douglas Bakenhus, will perform Orchestral Suite No. 2 by J.S. Bach, featuring Dr. Dennette McDermott, Symphony No. 8 (Unfinished) by Franz Schubert and Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra by Dmitri Shostakovich featuring Fitenko. McDermott is a professor of flute at Northwestern. Fitenko is an assistant professor of piano.

Bakenhus said many orchestras are performing works by Shostakovich this year on the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth.

"The work is very energetic and fiery, yet its middle movement is simple and beautiful," he said. "It is a very exciting work."

According to Bakenhus, the piece by Bach is an early example of orchestral music with several solo parts for flute.

Schubert's Unfinished Symphony is a work which has been widely debated by scholars for decades.

"Schubert lived for six years after he stopped working on this symphony and wrote another symphony, so he had time to complete it," said Bakenhus. "There are many theories about why he didn't finish it. I believe he was never inspired to finish it."

Bakenhus calls the first movement "partly cloudy" and the second movement "partly sunny." The first movement is ominous while the second one is more optimistic.

"Schubert was going through personal difficulties and poor health while he wrote the first movement, but things improved as he was writing the second movement," said Bakenhus. "Even though the work is unfinished, it is one of the most performed works in the orchestral repertoire."

Fitenko has performed recitals and with orchestras in the former Soviet Union, Europe, Asia, and South and North America. He has appeared as a soloist with such orchestras as St. Petersburg Capella Symphony, Russian Chamber Philharmonic, St. Petersburg State Conservatory Orchestra, Lewisville Symphony, Rapides Symphony and the Hermitage Orchestra.

Fitenko performs a wide repertoire, but is an acknowledged master of Russian piano music. Since 1997, he has been under contract with Altarus Records to record a series of works by leading Russian composers of the 20th century. His initial recording of solo piano works by Georgy Sviridov (1997) and his two-CD set of music by Sergei Slonimsky (2000) have garnered rave reviews from the international music press.

A graduate of the St. Petersburg State Conservatory, he received a citation for excellence given to only five other graduates in the last fifty years. After receiving the Anton Rubinstein Memorial Award he came to study in the United States, earning his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of North Texas.

Since 2002, Nikita Fitenko has been an artistic director of the Louisiana Piano Series International - one of the most interesting and diverse classical piano series in the U.S. For the 2006-2007 season, number of internationally acclaimed pianists from Ukraine, South Korea, Bulgaria, Canada, Byelorussia, Germany, and the United States are scheduled to perform solo recitals as a part of the series. He is also the founder and artistic director of the Louisiana International Piano Competition.

McDermott made her European debut was in the Czech Republic with the Czech premiere of Jindrich Feld's Introduzione Toccata e Fuga. In 1991 she gave a lecture recital which included the American premiere of the work at the University of North Texas. In 1995 she was the recipient of the Magale Endowed Professorship Award which allowed her to participate in an International Mastercourse at the Janacek Academie of Music and also to take part in a faculty exchange.
She was the recipient of the Mildred Hart Bailey award for her research and performances of Czech music in 1998. In 2003 she received an Artslink grant and the Brannen-Cooper Fund, to support and perform in the first Slovak Flute Festival in Bratislava, Slovakia. In 2005 she was awarded an Enrichment Grant from NSU for her woodwind trio of flute, clarinet and bassoon to travel to Slovakia to perform and teach.

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