Faculty artist Joaquín Valdepeñas conducts top students in Russian composer Edison Denisov’s adventurous 1961 piece for eleven wind instruments and timpani, followed by Mozart’s sublime Serenade for 13 Winds known as the “Gran Partita.” It’s one of the composer’s most beloved works in any genre and undoubtedly one of the greatest masterpieces ever written for wind band. In Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, the character Salieri gives a vivid and emotional description of the adagio movement, saying” "On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse - bassoons and basset horns - like a rusty squeezebox. Then suddenly - high above it - an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, till a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I'd never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to me that I was hearing a voice of God."