Season Finale: Votapek Plays Rachmaninoff - Kevin Rhodes, conductor; Ralph Votapek, piano. Performances are Saturday, May 31 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, June 1 at 3 p.m. at Corson Auditorium, on the campus of the Interlochen Center for the Arts. Maestro Rhodes welcomes his friend and former teacher, Michigan’s own Ralph Votapek, for one of the definitive works of the Romantic era. Rachmaninoff himself premiered the work in 1900, following several years of composer’s block and depression. In addition to its lingering popularity with concert audiences, the work has been the basis and inspiration for numerous pop songs, including Frank Sinatra’s “Full Moon and Empty Arms,” Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself,” and the popera song “Nostalgia” by Amici Forever. It is mentioned by Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch when she says, “every time I hear it I go to pieces.” Pianist Ralph Votapek’s early triumphs – as winner of the prestigious Naumburg Award and Gold Medalist in the first Van Cliburn International Piano Competition – were an auspicious prelude to an even more remarkable career. Votapek has made literally hundreds of appearances with major American orchestras. Featured sixteen times as the Chicago Symphony’s guest soloist, he has played with the Boston Pops, the Philadelphia Orchestra the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, and the Pittsburgh and San Francisco symphonies. Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra of 1944 derives its title from the soloistic and virtuosic treatment of instruments throughout the orchestra. According to Bartók scholar Peter Gutmann, the work is a “vibrant and spontaneous-sounding celebration of life, beginning with a primordial coalescing of consciousness and culminating in an explosive outburst of defiant vitality.” Commissioned by Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Fritz Reiner, it was composed during World War II after Bartók’s emigration to New York, in a time when his health was failing. The last work completed by the composer before his untimely death, it is infused throughout with the Hungarian folk music elements that were so dear to Bartók. For tickets, call 231- 947-7120 or visit online at www.tso-online.org.