André Watts Helps ASO Kick Off Centennial Season

The Austin Symphony Orchestra turns 100 this year. For the first performance of this centennial season, world-renowned pianist André Watts joins Maestro Peter Bay and the orchestra this weekend. Watts, 1988 winner of the Avery Fisher Prize, began his career playing for Leonard Bernstein at the age of 16 and currently serves as Professor of Music at Indiana University.

The pianist and ASO will be playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58. Also on the program is New England Triptych by 20th-Century American composer (and the first Pulitzer Prize winner for music composition) William Schuman. Schuman based his 1956 composition on work by early American composer William Billings.

Austin Symphony Orchestra will perform music by Robert Schumann as well; his Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 61 will be played to celebrate the bicentennial of his birth.