Sometimes it’s easy to forget what music sounded like before the age of electronic beats and artificial sounds. This Thursday, Sept. 17, the Huxford Symphony Orchestra will help people remember as they perform their first concert of the 2015-2016 season.

The orchestra will be performing “Symphony No. 2” by Johannes Brahms and “Konzertstück” by Robert Schumann, two classical pieces that show off the hard work put in by orchestra members who have been rehearsing since the first day of classes. Dr. Blake Richardson, director of Orchestral Studies in the Department of Music, described the pieces as engaging to the audience.

“[Symphony No. 2] is a really exciting piece to listen to with lots of loud, fast passages and really engaging to the listener,” Richardson said. “The second is a beautiful work with moments of calm, lyric melody and a very exciting finish to it.”

Richardson described the concert as entertaining for music aficionados and first-time concert-goers alike.

“It’s two very easily accessible pieces that audience members will enjoy, and it’s a little bit over an hour of music,” Richardson said. “It’s an accessible concert for people coming to the symphony for the first time.”

In “Konzertstück,” four of the horn parts will be performed by a current University faculty member and also alumni who graduated with degrees in horn performance. Madelyn Cook, a second year masters student studying French horn performance, enjoys this piece because she gets to hear her peers display their talent.

“I love [Konzertstück] because it’s a great piece, and there’s very few pieces like that,” Cook said. “I get to hear my future and hear my colleagues show off.”

Cook encourages people to come to the concert to experience live music, a change from what most people are used to hearing on the radio.

“I’m a huge advocate for live music, especially because music that’s becoming popular today is not necessarily live,” Cook said. “It’s a lot of electronic music and prerecorded music. It means so much to hear concerts. There’s a human element that you can’t get on the radio.”

Fayth Williams, a junior majoring in Violin Performance, has been involved with the Huxford Orchestra since she auditioned on her first day of classes of her freshman year. She said she enjoys the process of hearing the work of the orchestra come together.

“It’s a very rewarding experience because all of us as individual musicians put in a lot of effort and time into our individual parts, and then coming together as a whole and rehearsing it in detail and then performing it for and audience. It’s really overwhelming,” Williams said. “It’s like sharing another language.”

The concert is tonight at 7:30 p.m. in Moody Music Building. Tickets are $10, or $3 with a student ID and can be purchased online at uamusic.tix.com.