WHEELING — The Wheeling Symphony Orchestra will welcome back piano prodigy Maxim Lando for its next performance on Saturday afternoon on Jan. 17 at the Capitol Theatre.

The concert — “All My Memories” — will in many ways be a reflection on the pandemic era and how it has affected not only the orchestra but the Wheeling community as a whole. Back in March of 2020, the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra was busy rehearsing with Lando as its special guest when the world literally got put on hold.

All My Memories, the second Masterworks concert in the WSO’s current 2025-26 season, will give the symphony a chance to pick up where they left off when everyone’s plans were derailed by the pandemic. The concert will take place at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 17.

“This one is very special because we are really focusing on what happened five years ago — COVID,” said Gail Looney, WSO Director of Foundations and Government Relations, who is also the orchestra librarian and a performing member of the orchestra, playing flute and piccolo. “We were right here in Capitol Theatre having our dress rehearsal on March 12. We were playing Beethoven’s 7th … and we got the word that the state had been shut down because of COVID. We could not do our concert the next day.”

Next week’s concert will not only feature the return of Lando as a special guest performer but will also include Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, which had been a featured work in the concert in 2020 that had to be canceled.

That theme of resiliency will also be emphasized as the WSO’s Festival of Ideas unfolds with events taking place throughout the week leading up to the concert. The Festival Ideas includes a week of panels, discussions, recitals and other events designed to complement one of the WSO’s Masterworks concerts.

Kicking off at noon on Monday, Jan. 12, the Festival of Ideas will be part of a special “Lunch With Books” program at the Ohio County Public Library in Wheeling. The program will include a performance and a panel discussion and will feature WSO Music Director John Devlin, WSO Principal Bassoonist Andy Sledge, West Virginia Poet Laureate Marc Harshman, Psychologist Dr. Dee Nazzaro and professor of sociology Dr. Daniel Renfrew.

“We’re talking about reflections and resilience and what we did to get through (the pandemic),” Looney said.

At 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 14, the WSO String Quartet will perform at Trinity West in Steubenville, with music and a discussion led by Devlin for the Festival of Ideas. Events continue with a piano recital with Lando at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 15, in the Waddington Room at the Oglebay Mansion.

The events for the Festival of Ideas culminate with the concert next Saturday.

“We try to do this every two years,” Looney said of the Festival of Ideas. “It was started by Andre (Raphel) — who was our music director for 15 years.”

Devlin has since continued the tradition.

“He really likes doing the Festival of Ideas,” Looney said. “We like to focus on humanities and similar subjects that might be somewhat interesting to the community — something we can speak to and something that has great meaning to us as musicians and as an orchestra.”

The upcoming concert will also be a special one for the new WSO Executive Director Marc Zyla, who stepped into his new role late last year.

“I actually started two days before Symphony on Ice,” he said, noting that he has seen the WSO perform before an audience at Music Under the Stars at Oglebay Park and at Symphony on Ice at WesBanco Arena, but he has yet to see the orchestra perform at its true home — the historic Capitol Theatre.

“I grew up in an orchestra family,” Zyla said. “My father was a French horn player, and I am a French horn player, as well. So getting into the theatre and learning this new home is something that’s exciting to me. I’d also be selfish to say that, as a French horn player, Beethoven’s 7th Symphony is so good for the French horn. I’m looking forward to hearing them — and not having to play it myself!”

Originally from Parkersburg, Zyla went to West Virginia University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in Musical Arts. He then went on to Carnegie Mellon University to earn his master’s degree for Fine Arts in Horn Performance before relocating to the Midwest, completing his doctoral course work in Horn Performance and Literature at the University of Illinois.

He served as principal horn and personnel manager of the Quad City Symphony Orchestra, worked for Quad Cities NPR and served as director for community engagement for WVIK.

Zyla said he has been excited that he and his wife have opened a new chapter in his home state of West Virginia.

“We’re just excited to come home and make Wheeling our home,” he said.

He added that the upcoming concert will be particularly exciting because of the remarkable music that will be part of the program. Having a gifted young piano prodigy as a special guest will be icing on the cake, he noted.

“Knowing this repertoire — the Prokofiev Piano Concerto is extremely exciting, and everybody loves pianists, so watching his hands is going to be incredible,” Zyla said. “But also, Beethoven’s 7th Symphony is a fantastic piece of music that’s got both heroic melodies but also some of the most beautiful lines in classical music.”

For tickets and information, visit wheelingsymphony.com, call 304-232-6191 or visit the WSO box office at 1025 Main Street, Suite 811, Wheeling.