Even the Prince George Symphony Orchestra's music director has his favourite Beethoven piece - but it's not what you think.
It's not the famous ba-ba-ba-buhhhhh of the Fifth Symphony, probably the most famous piece of orchestral music known to man.
Kevin Zakresky's favourite is Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto.
"We're used to the big hair and the angry-ness of Beethoven but this (Fourth Piano Concerto) is a beautiful reprieve from all of that," said Zakresky. "I really didn't want to end on such a furious note. I wanted to leave the audience with an absolutely gorgeous piece of music and that's why it will be played in the second half."
Beethoven: the Romantic Revolutionary brings the best of Beethoven to Prince George on Saturday night in Vanier Hall at 7:30 p.m.
To perform the piano concerto, pianist Lucas Wong, currently a professor at the Soochow University School of Music in China, trained at UBC and Yale, will make his PGSO debut.
Zakresky and Wong went to the University of British Columbia and did their piano degrees at the same time, then both went to Yale where Wong did his doctorate in piano while Zakresky did his doctorate in choir conducting.
"We graduated together in 2012 and I told Lucas that Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto was my favourite and he said it was his, too," said Zakresky, who put it on the orchestra's schedule when Wong was available.
"Beethoven was truly music's Romantic Revolutionary, a composer who broke the rules and made new ones," said Zakresky. "In keeping with his adventurous spirit, we begin our first program of the new year with some brand new music, a piece by our own Jos Delgado-Guevara. Mr. Delgado-Guevara's composition, like the work of Beethoven two centuries ago, is full of life and rhythm and I know our PGSO audience will find it exciting and fun."
The piece, Dances, is a group of dances that took Delgado-Guevara 18 months to create.
"Instead of being the orchestra playing a dance, the orchestra is playing the impressions of somebody watching somebody else's dance," explained Delgado-Guevara, who will be conducting his music. "So it's how you witness something being danced. It's how it affects us emotionally. This type of music allows the audience to make their own story."
Tickets are at the PGSO office, Studio 2880, and online at TicketMaster.
