Culture, class and musical beauty will sweep through town when the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) performs at 8 p.m. tomorrow in Eisenhower Auditorium.

"They have been here a couple of times before, and they have always been a hometown favorite," said Peter Wray, press and public relations manager for the Center for the Performing Arts.

The Orchestra opened Eisenhower Auditorium in May 1974 by performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

The Orchestra will be performing the same repertoire that it will play at a show tonight at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Musical selections the Orchestra is scheduled to perform include: Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Richard Strauss's Serenade for Winds in E-flat Major, Op. 7, Gabrieli's Sonata for XVIII, Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2, and the second movement of Hersch's Ashes of Memory.

The pieces the Orchestra will perform span a wide space of time and genre.

Stravinsky's composition, written in 1920, is a memorial to his deceased friend and fellow musician Claude Debussy, while Ravel's 1912 works are two orchestral suites from his ballet Daphnis and Chloe.

A late Romantic composer (1881), Strauss wrote his Serenade for Winds for 13 wind instruments when he was a teenager.

The other two pieces that will be performed are Gabrieli's Sonata, which was written during the Renaissance period, and Hersch's "Ashes of Memory" (1999). Hersch's 18-minute piece contains two movements.

The first movement is very intense, while the second movement is said to evoke a tone of things experienced that never fade with time.

The full symphony orchestra will be in attendance tomorrow and will also be conducted by world-renowned musician and conductor Mariss Jansons.

Jansons joined the PSO as music director in 1997 and has been the music director for the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra since 1979.

"Those who know classical music know Mariss Jansons is worth seeing," Wray said.

In 1999 Jansons became an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music, which has an extremely narrow membership of 300 living musicians.

Recently there was much speculation whether or not Jansons was going to stay with the PSO.

Just last fall Jansons appeared to be considering a position with the New York Philharmonic but decided to stay. Not until recently was it known for certain that Jansons would stay with the PSO.

According to Gideon Toeplitz, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of the PSO, Jansons had accepted a position with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra this past January, but his contract doesn't officially begin until 2003/2004.

"It was difficult to deal with, but also flattering," Toeplitz said. "He (Jansons) was contemplating his future musical career and the time it took to conduct."

The PSO has made over 100 recordings and has had 24 international tours.

"It's an opportunity that students should take advantage of," Wray said. "The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is one of the top-ranked orchestras in the world, if not the United States."

Tickets are still available at the Arts Ticket Center, (814) 863-0255. With the help of UPAC funding, the prices for Penn State students with a Penn State ID are only $25 and $17. General tickets are $40 and $30.