A “Best of the Best” concert featuring the Wartburg Community Symphony and internationally renowned opera star Simon Estes is Saturday, Feb. 14, 7:30 p.m. in Neumann Auditorium on the Wartburg College campus. The event will cap the Wartburg College Meistersinger Honor Orchestra Festival.

The Valley High School Chamber Orchestra from West Des Moines will play in the concert, which also will be held Sunday at 3 p.m. in the Valley High School Performing Arts Center, 3650 Woodland Ave., West Des Moines. A reception will follow each concert. 

The symphony, under the direction of Daniel Kaplunas, will perform “Sibelius,” “Finlandia,” Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” Gustav Holst’s Mars and Jupiter movements from “The Planets” and music from Igor Stravinsky’s “Firebird.”

“These two concerts should be spectacular. We are performing some of the most wonderful music ever written,” Kaplunas said. “The Wartburg Community Symphony is being joined by the best high school orchestra in Iowa, and Simon Estes, our featured soloist, is one of the most amazing singers in the world. Classical music concerts don’t get much better than that.”

Estes, Wartburg artist in residence, will perform “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and “Ol’ Man River.”

Tickets are available by phone at 800-772-2085, ext. 8691 or online at wartburg.edu/symphony and are $16.50 for adults and $6.50 for students. Tickets also will be available at the door beginning at 6:45 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

The concert is sponsored in part by a grant from the Max and Helen Guernsey Charitable Foundation.