Chamber orchestra to mark 40 years with performance

Quick: What do composers Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Gioacchino Rossini, Edvard Grieg and Felix Mendelssohn have in common?

True, all but Rossini are identified with the Romantic era, but other overlaps are more difficult to discern. After all, each hailed from a different nation — Russia, Italy, Norway and Germany, respectively — and had a distinct, identifiable style.

This weekend, though, the composers will be linked by an anniversary: On Sunday, in a concert to take place 40 years after its formation, the Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra will perform works by each. The anniversary aside, the program was not intended to have a common thread.

“In the old days, ... people didn’t really have themes of the concert when you have the good orchestras, the great orchestras,” said conductor Luis Biava. “They just sort of put (in) an overture, then there might be a solo and there might be a big piece.”

Also eclectic is the roster of the community orchestra, which consists of about 60 amateur and semiprofessional musicians. Included among its ranks are physicians, homemakers and retirees. Members hail from places as far away as Lancaster and Mount Vernon, Biava said.

“It’s just a giant crosssection of professions,” he said.

In 1979, violist Ann Elliot recruited the orchestra’s first conductor, Timothy Russell. The future cofounder of the Promusica Chamber Orchestra had been guest-conducting the Jewish Orchestra, of which Elliot was a member.

“I was driving Tim back to his house, and I just said off the top of my head, ‘If I found you an orchestra, would you conduct it?’” said Elliot, who co-founded the ensemble with the late Marjorie Brundage. “And he just laughed at me but said, ‘Of course,’ and so Marj and I went at it.”

Biava, who also serves as the principal cellist of the Columbus Symphony and music director of the New Albany Symphony Orchestra, is both demanding and understanding in leading the musicians.

“He’ll never pick on somebody for making a wrong note or a bad noise,” Elliot said. “(There’s) a magic about him that hauls out of us music that we never believed we could ever play.”

Sunday’s concert, however, will include a musician’s request: At the suggestion of violist Lois Seward, Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture” will be performed. (Orchestra members are encouraged to submit ideas for future performances in a suggestion box.)

"I absolutely love it," Seward said of the piece. "I haven't played it in so long. I probably last played it in my youth orchestra in high school."

Biava decided to program the piece.

“Sometimes things are very difficult, but we worked on it in the summer,” he said. “I feel it could be done, so now we’re doing it.”

Also on tap are the overture to Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” and Grieg’s “Peer Gynt”; the latter piece has not been performed in some time, Biava said.

“Some new players, some of the old players are there, too — personnel changes a little bit,” he said.

Biava will also lead the musicians in a performance of Mendelssohn’s “The Hebrides.”

Biava called the work a “very beautiful piece by Mendelssohn, representing that area in the British Isles near the Hebrides, ... with the caves and the waves and the darkness.”

Members of the orchestra may learn from Biava, but the maestro returns the compliment.

“I have actually cut my teeth on major works with MCO,” he said.