“Fantasy, boldness, unexpectedness, enchantment”: Bizet’s “Carmen” – Sammamish Symphony – Bellevue

The popularity of Gustav Holst’s The Planets, while certainly well-deserved, has tended to obscure his many other fine compositions. The haunting Somerset Rhapsody will be an evocative and atmospheric introduction to a program which then turns to a suite drawn from Georges Bizet’s Carmen, surely one of the half-dozen most beloved operas of all time. The mightiest and most extroverted of Beethoven’s concertos, the Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”), features the winner of the Symphony’s yearly Young Artists Competition, the highly-accomplished Ms. Sandy Huang.