Photo Credit: Willy Somma

On Sunday, May 15 at 4 p.m., the Princeton Symphony Orchestra (PSO) presents its Passion and Affection concert performed in honor of Arnold H. Snider, III and featuring Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Hiraeth, a multi-media work co-commissioned by the PSO with the North Carolina Symphony. Also on the program to be conducted by PSO Music Director Rossen Milanov at Richardson Auditorium are Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, Johann Strauss, Jr.’s Wine, Women, and Song, Op. 333, and Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier Suite, Op. 59. On Tuesday, May 17 at 7:30 p.m., musicians of the PSO will perform Snider’s critically acclaimed work Penelope which features text by playwright Ellen McLaughlin sung by Carla Kihlstedt. John Devlin conducts the concert at Princeton High School’s Performing Arts Center, which caps the PSO’s season dedicated to the creativity of women.

Sarah Kirkland Snider is the composer of the critically acclaimed song cycles Penelope and Unremembered. She was born and raised in Princeton, and played in the Princeton High School Orchestra.

Snider’s multi-media work Hiraeth, recalls childhood visits to beloved grandparents in Salisbury, North Carolina and includes images of her family presented in a film shot on location in that state by Mark DiChiazza. Shortly after beginning the composition, her father Arnold H. Snider, III was diagnosed with cancer. Patrons and members will have an opportunity to hear Snider and Milanov discuss the performance of Hiraeth at the Saturday, May 14, Behind the Music of Sarah Kirkland Snider presentation at the Arts Council of Princeton’s Paul Robeson Center at 4 p.m.

The May 17 concert program consists entirely of Snider’s song cycle Penelope, originally written as a music-theater monodrama by Ellen McLaughlin and Snider in 2007-08. Snider later re-wrote it as a song cycle for voice and chamber ensemble. Inspired by Homer’s character Penelope, the work explores themes of war, trauma, and homecoming, but it’s ultimately a story of relationships, passion, and healing.

The May 15 Passion & Affection concert is sponsored by Joyce and Georg Albers-Schonberg and Melanie and John Clarke in honor of their friend and colleague Arnold H. Snider, III. The PSO’s performance of Hiraeth is supported in part by the Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy.

Tickets for both performances are available at princetonsymphony.org and (609) 497-0020.