Since 1932, the North Carolina Symphony has been enthralling audiences with fi ne musical compositions and fi rst class entertainment. They perform 175 concerts annually throughout the state in varied settings and communities of all sizes. Whether it is a concert hall, a gymnasium or a park, the symphony is constantly and consistently reaching out to North Carolina residents to share with them the beauty and art of musical performances. They’ve partnered with other arts organizations like the Playmakers Repertory Company and the North Carolina Museum of Art to produce things like the four-concert series Crossing the Atlantic which examined cultural and musical dialogues between America and Britain and featured the work of Robin Holloway, James MacMillan, Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, among others.

On Thursday, Feb. 3, the North Carolina Symphony will perform at Reeves Auditorium at Methodist University as part of their Dance in Music Series.

The orchestra will play several pieces including Debussy’s “Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun” and “Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite.” Renowned soloist Valentina Lisitsa will perform Saint-Sans’s “Piano Concerto No. 2”.

Lisitsa was born in Kiev, Ukraine to a family of non-musicians. She began playing the piano at the age of three and had her fi rst solo recital when she was four. Although she is quite talented and music came easy to her, she had no intention of becoming a full-time musician. She had her sights set on becoming a professional chess player.

“With a minimum of practice time, she sailed through the Kiev Conservatory, winning competitions along the way, by relying on her extraordinary sight-reading abilities and photographic memory. Valentina attributes her effortless technique to hours of mindless repetition of the most difficult passages while simultaneously devouring a book that interested her, which she kept open on her music stand. This way, she explains, she was able to convince her family that she was practicing,” according to the North Carolina Symphony.

After meeting fellow student and her future partner, Alexei Kuznetsoff, at the Conservatory, Lisitsa began to think about music more seriously. The first major enterprise undertaken by the young couple turned out to be not only a great success but a turning point in their lives. They decided to prepare for the most important two-piano competition in the world — The Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition.

In one year of intense work they achieved something which ordinarily takes decades — becoming a seamless unity as a duo-piano team. Their reward, in addition to winning fi rst prize in the 1991 Competition, was an opportunity to move to the United States and launch a career as one of the most highly-esteemed piano duos in the country, beginning with their orchestral debut at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York.

The dance portion of the evening will include Polovtsian Dances from Borodin’ opera Prince Igor. The Polovtsy were nomadic invaders of Russia who, in the opera, capture Igor.

The show starts at 8 p.m. Visit http://www.ncsymphony.org/ for tickets and more info.

Photo above right: Valentina Lisitsa