Music achieves its full emotional effect only when performed live, just as great literature becomes comprehensible only when screamed aloud in a crowded subway train. Enjoy public performance with today’s deal to the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. Choose between the following options:

• For $18, you get one ticket to the Rush Hour performance of Tchaikovsky on the Edge on Thursday, October 13 at 6:30 p.m. (a $37 value).
• For $49, you get one ticket to each of the following three Rush Hour performances (a $111 total value):
• Tchaikovsky on the Edge on Thursday, October 13 at 6:30 p.m.
• The Red Violin on Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 6:30 p.m.
• ¡Viva España! on Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 6:30 p.m.<p>

Under the graceful baton of music director and conductor Roberto Minczuk, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra delights audiences of all ages with a broad repertoire of classical and contemporary orchestral works. A series of casual Rush Hour performances hosted by the CBC’s Katherine Duncan helps patrons scrub ears clear of workaday sounds such as clicking keyboards and gossiping water coolers with mellifluous one-hour concerts. Tchaikovsky on the Edge treats cochleae to a hearty slice of the composer’s moving Symphony no. 6 (“Pathétique”); February’s The Red Violin performance drives away winter’s gray atmosphere with a quartet of colourful stringed pieces including Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” and Leonard Bernstein’s “Three Dance Episodes from On the Town” bolstered by Donovan Seidle’s fleet-fingered fiddling. Ready hips and shoulders for unfettered shimmying during May’s ¡Viva España! concert featuring a trio of animated Iberian melodies including Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol, op. 34; Maurice Ravel’s sultry Boléro; and Manuel de Falla’s “Ritual Fire Dance” accompanied by Fred Astaire–shaped flames. To keep audience members in tune with what they’re hearing, the host and the musical director dole a bevy of interesting insights about the evening’s program.