For this program, titled “Songs of Destiny” and conducted by Music Director Benjamin Rous, the Charlottesville Symphony is joined by the UVA University Singers, the University of Virginia’s 100-voice SATB choral ensemble. Rous and University Singers Director Michael Slon selected two choral works that are both timely and timeless: Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s “Da pacem Domine” (“Give peace Lord”) and “Schicksalslied” (“Song of Destiny”) by Johannes Brahms.

The orchestra’s strings perform Pärt’s “Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten” with a single bell that casts a mesmerizing spell for the duration of the piece. It was written as an elegy following the 1976 death of the English composer Benjamin Britten whose work Pärt admired for its “unusual purity.” The cinematic quality of Cantus has led to it being used often as a background accompaniment in film and television productions.

Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 in F Major rounds out the program. In a lighter vein, it opens with the quotation of an F-A-flat-F musical motif, heard throughout the work. F-A-flat-F: Frei aber Froh, “Free but happy.”

Both performances are underwritten in part by the Vesta Lee Gordon Fund at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation.

In-depth program notes by Program Annotator Laurie Shulman are posted on the orchestra’s website, www.cvillesymphony.org, two weeks prior to each Masterworks concert.

Currently, wearing masks is optional at both Old Cabell Hall and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center.

Free parking is available at Charlottesville High School’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center. The hall is wheelchair accessible.

Tickets are $10-$45 for adults and $10 for students, and may be purchased at the University of Virginia Arts Box Office, (434) 924-3376, 12:00-5:00pm, Tuesday through Friday in the lobby of the UVA Drama Building at 109 Culbreth Road, or online at www.artsboxoffice.virginia.edu.

All University of Virginia employees (faculty and staff of all UVA departments and professional schools) are entitled to a 20% discount on tickets to individual performances. This offer does not apply to subscriptions, the December Family Holiday concerts or previously purchased tickets.