bY jOHN fARRELL

Cal Phil Features Bryan Pezzone in Sunday Pops Concert at Disney Hall

By John Farrell

Sunday afternoon the California Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director Victor Vener played some beautiful music in the confines of Walt Disney Hall, their second venue. They called it Dancing under the Stars” though the stars weren't out that afternoon. (They played the same concert the night before at the Los Angeles County Arboretum as well, which explains the title.)

No negative judgment on the Arboretum, where thousands go every two weeks to hear the orchestra play under the stars, but it is hard to believe that the music Sunday could have sounded better at any venue in, say, the western United States, indoors or out. There were problems, of course, but the orchestra was fully professional, if not flawless then nearly so, and the rehearsal from the night before only served to make everyone sharper.

That's not saying that everything was of equal value at Sunday's concert. The afternoon opened with selection from the musical “Grease” that featured a couple of recognizable tunes but that otherwise didn't have much to commend it. It was a musical bon-bon, no more, and not a high calorie, rich chocolate one at that.

Ignoring that opening, the concert was filled with serious music and enough variety to satisfy most tastes and featured a world (indoor) premier of two works by pianist and composer Bryan Pezzone.

After the selections from “Grease” the orchestra changed from a pops orchestra plying hits to a serious orchestra giving its all to Ravel's 1912 “Daphnis and Chloe, Suite no. 2,” a marvel of Impressionistic music whose roots Vener explained with characteristic humor. The music has an effect that is palpable and mysterious: you feel like all nature should sound like the first movement, “Lever du jour,” and while the next two movements aren't as profound, the effect of all is complete magic played by an effective and musically secure orchestra.

The other Ravel work on the program was the better-known “Bolero,” a work that is too often taken for granted. True, in a recording it is little more than a cliché, and probably doesn't deserve much attention. Performed live, though, and it can be filled with passion and a very real sense that every instrument in the orchestra is exposed and must play precisely for “Bolero” to work. Terrence Schonigt, who plays the same riff on the snare drum through the entire work, is perhaps the most remarkable of the performers in “Bolero,” but precision and perfect coordination are required throughout the orchestra. You may not love the piece, but you have to appreciate the sheer artistry of performing it live.

Pianist and soloist Bryan Pezzone was the featured soloist, performing with drummer M.B. Gordy and bass guitarist Tim Emmons three pieces of his own composition on the long grand piano, “Skipping,” “Lament” and “Dancing Hearts,” all at least in agreement with the concert's title (though, as Pezzone pointed out from the piano bench, more introspective and emotional than their names suggested.) They were bright, interesting and melodic.

The the orchestra came back into play, after listening respectfully to the trio on the stage front, playing with the soloists a piece called “Banana Dancing (for Mr. Moose),” the world premier (except for Saturday night, of course.) It was a little in the form of a piano concerto, complete with a cadenza and plenty of dialogue between the pianist and the orchestra, played with enthusiasm by its composer and the orchestra as well. (The title is a tribute to a childhood music teacher, apparently.)

The orchestra played, as another brief offering, Glenn Miller's “In the Mood” in an orchestration that emphasized the brass and was a pleasant diversion before the program's final work, Bernstein's “Symphonic Dances” from “West Side Story.”

The last is a regular at Pops concerts but is still worth hearing, and Vener had the audience yell out “mambo” at his direction when it was cued in the score, and a fillip to the performance.

The next pair of California Philharmonic concerts, “Rodgers and Hammerstein in Europe,” are scheduled for Saturday, August 6 at the Arboretum at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, August 7 at 2 p.m. at Walt Disney Hall.

John Farrell is a local music and theater critic. More of his stories can be found at www.byjohnfarrell@typepad.com.

 

Golden State Pops reprises Disney's Tale as Old as Time With Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean and UP as part of show

Disney in Concert: Tale as Old as Time

What: Concert by Golden State Pops Orchestra, Steven Allen Fox, music director
When: Saturday at 8 p.m., doors open at 7 p.m., stage-side chat at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $25 in advance, $30 at the door, students and seniors $15 in advance, $20 at the door, VIP tickets $35 in advance, $40 at the door.
Information: (310) 433-8774, www.gspo.com

By John Farrell

Last year the Golden State Pops Orchestra teamed up with the Disney Concert Library to present “Disney in Concert: Tale as Old as Time,” a program of music, songs and video clips from the Disney film library that was nearly sold out the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro for the night, so this season they are repeating the performance, and this time they may actually fill the theater to its capacity.

The concert is tomorrow night at 8 p.m., with the beautiful theater opening its doors an hour beforehand, and with a stage-side chat with Disney composer Charles Rydlund moderated by Daily Breeze Features Editor Leo Smith set for 7:30 p.m.

“Tale as Old as Time” was created by the Disney Concert Library for local orchestras with professional level orchestrations and a theme that is developed by the music itself, with film excerpts and, this year new music, including themes from the film “UP” and a new segment of tunes from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. (It just happens that the latest installment of that Disney franchise will premier this spring.

Chase Masterson will be the narrator in the concert, with four vocalists, Araceli Applegate, Natalie Taylor, Drew Tablak and Stephen Van Dorn, and the GSPO playing the brilliant music, which will tell stories of love and friendship from the Disney catalog, including “The Little Mermaid” and “The Lion King.”

“A couple of pieces of music have been replaced for this concert” said Fox in a recent phone conversation. “We have included music from 'UP' which won the Academy Award last year and tunes from 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' because the new film will be released a week after our concert, but otherwise the show is exactly the same as the one we did last year.

“The show was the largest with a combined audience that we have ever had, and the response to it was amazing. We got calls, letters, e-mails, all saying that they would come again if we did the show. It wasn't surprising that we got a good response because the show itself was great. The Disney (Concert Library) put together a great show and asked us to premier it on the west coast and they agreed to let us do it again this year.”

One added advantage: Jonathan Heely of DCL has now become a member of the GSPO special advisory committee and will be working with the GSPO in the future.

And though plans for another performance of this concert aren't in place, the GSPO will be performing a Disney-themed concert for their first scheduled concert in the 2011-2012 season, which will begin this September. That concert will be a tribute to the Sherman brothers, the duo of composers who wrote many of Disney's greatest songs in their long career. “Disney has a rule that only 20 minutes of Disney music can be played at any concert,” Fox said, “but they have waived that rule for us and there will some surprises in the concert in September.”

 

Tchaikovsky violin concerto, Glinka's “Russlan and Ludmilla,” Carmen suite fill LBSO March concert with Diemecke conducting, soloist Kaler

By John Farrell

Concert names have become the in thing across the land, and at the Long Beach Symphony, perhaps for marketing reasons, they are as exciting as anywhere else. That is, if you prefer your music with a seductive title.

The most recent LBSO concert, Saturday night at the Terrace Theatre in Long Beach, was subtitled
“The Seductress, the Prince and the Princess,” a nod to the “Carmen” Suite that took up much of the second half of the mostly but hardly all-Russian program, no doubt. A better title, if one was necessary at all, would have been “Tchaikovsky's violin concerto and a little more,” for it was the Tchaikovsky, in the more than capable hands of soloist Ilya Kaler, that was the centerpiece and even, if we must use French, the raison d'etre of the whole and often glorious concert, the fourth in what is Maestro Enrique Arturo Diemecke's tenth season with the symphony.

Speaking of titles, this entire season of concerts has been promulgated under the heading “From Russia with Love,” without even a nod of thanks to Ian Fleming. Most of the works this season are Russian (though “Carmen” is clearly not) and on this evening the music began with Glinka's lively and often-heard overture to “Russlan and Ludmilla.” Diemecke led at a breakneck pace, perhaps even a little too fast for his orchestra, but it was a cheerful and lively reading, with only one question: if Glinka wrote this often played and exciting work, why do we never hear of anything else from the first Russian nationalist composer? Just asking.

The Tchaikovsky in all its myriad glories took up the rest of the concert's first half, with Kaler and Diemecke, who have worked together for 20 years now, teaming up to make the work a true delight.

Kaler plays a Guarnerius violin and, like many an ancient instruments, it has a voice all its own. The Tchaikovsky is as well known as any violin concerto, and is usually played by an instrument of surpassing lightness of tone. Kaler's instrument sounded a bit like it had just a touch of gravel in it, if that were possible, throatier and richer than other fiddles, fighting a bit against the constraints of Tchaikovsky's music. Kaler had every trick in his hands, from double stops to lightning changes from bowed passages to quick pizzicato and back, all without seeing any effort at all on his part. There were moments when his instruments voice was overpowered by the orchestra, but they were brief, and his passion and depth of feeling kept pace with all the technical brilliance. Diemecke was nearly always in command of his forces and the works lyric and dramatic qualities were well-balanced. It was brilliant, but not just brilliant: technique was celebrated but not at the expense of musicality. The audience gave Kaler three standing ovations: Diemecke has won them over to serious and lengthy pieces.

The “Carmen,” in the transcription by Hoffman (and not the modern Russian Rodion Shchedrin) was bright, filled with plenty of energy and plenty of percussion. Diemecke dance his way though it with a deft hand that reminded everyone that he is also an opera conductor of note. The final work on the program, the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin's opera “Prince Igor” were even more exciting, with Diemecke emphasizing the bass drum with his foot and dancing his way to the powerful and dramatic ending.

Next year's concert schedule was announced that night to the orchestra-goers (it had been released a few days earlier) and has, yes, another name: “Vienna Nights,” a nod to the city where much of classical music was developed (though London, Rome, Leipzig and a few other towns deserve notice.) The programs include music by Beethoven, Schoenberg, Lehar and Johann Strauss, Jr. They also include the West Coast premier of Diemecke's Marimba Concerto and music by Brahms and Mendelssohn. And, no doubt to prove how accurate these title are, the first thing on the first performance next October 1 is Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. We can't forget Russia quite that fast.

VideoGame Soundtracks

 

What: Concert by the Golden State Pops Orchestra, Steven Allen Fox, artistic director, Southern California Master Chorale, Sheridan Ball, director.
Where: Warner Grand Theatre, 478 W. 6th St., San Pedro; art display at Arcade Bldg, 479 W. 6th St.
When: Tomorrow at 8 p.m., doors open at 7 p.m., pre-concert stageside chat at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $25-$35, $15 for seniors, students and military members
Information: (310) 433-8774, www.gspo.com

By John Farrell

Classical music is largely a matter of dead musicians, but the Golden State Pops Orchestra has mined a rich load of classical music created by very-much alive composers, and ten of them will be the GSPO concert tomorrow when the orchestra offers its third installment of “VideoGame Soundtracks,” soaring orchestral music written by musical contemporaries for the games that need an entire environment: music as well as video graphics, to make their profound impact.

The concert is tomorrow at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro and includes not only new music from ten of the best video games composers but a related display, in the Arcade Building just down the street from the Warner's, of art associated with Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft.

This year's video game concert features music for various video games by ten of the top composers in their field. They include the two-time, 2011 Grammy winning composer Christopher Tin, Joey Newman, Russell Brower, Gerard Marino, Austin Wintory, Sean Murray, Greg Edmonson, Laura Karpman, Nobuo Uematsu, Wataru Hokoyama and Christopher Lennertz. The performance includes special video games visuals from “The Shattering” from the “World of Warcraft:Cataclysm” game with music by Browser. In addition there will be a premier of a suite from “Journey” composed by Wintory which is being especially prepared for the GSPO. It will be a sneak premier since the game for which it was written won't be out for several months, and features cello soloist Tina Guo, known for her solos in the films “Inception,” “Iron Man II” and “Sherlock Holmes.”

Tin won a Grammy this year for the song “Baba Yetu” from the game “Civilization,” which will be featured at Saturday's concert, and one for the album titled “Calling All Dawns.”

Those are only a few of the scores from video games that will be heard at tomorrow's concert. Also on tap is “Lineage,” by Emmy nominated composer Joey Newman. (Yes, Newman is part of the Hollywood musical dynasty that includes his great Uncle Lionel and cousins David, Thomas and Randy Newman.)

Two works by Marino are on the program as well: “City of Darkness/City of Light” from a soon to be released DC Universal online game and “The End Begins to Rock” from “Guitar Hero III.”
“Savanna” from “Afrika,” composed by Hokoyama, “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” by Murray, “Uncharted” by Edmonson, “Medal of Honor:Pacific Assault” by Lennertz, “One Winged Angel” from “Final Fantasy VII” by Uematsu and “Everquest” by Karpman round out the program. Most of the composers will be at Saturday's concert.

Joining Maestro Fox onstage will be the Southern California Master Chorale under the direction of Sheridan Ball, providing the vocal riffs for this complex music.

“I am always excited when VideoGanes Soundtracks is a part of our concert season,” Fox said. “I really enjoy piecing a show like this together and I know the audience will be thrilled with the music, video projections and special guests. Every email and phone call is another wonderful confirmation that we can perform a specific piece of music, show great imagery or welcome a special guest. Whether you play games or not, come and experience the sounds of VideoGame Soundtracks for yourself.”

Three more GSPO concerts are scheduled for the 2010-2011 season. On Saturday May 14 the orchestra will perform “Disney in Concert,” another special production in conjunction with the Disney Music organization. On Saturday, May 22 the orchestra will again be joined by soloists and the California Master Chorale for Brahm's Requiem. Finally, on Saturday June 11 the orchestra will finish its season with “Great Film Composers.” All concerts are at 8 p.m. in the Warner Grand.

 

Cal Phil ousted from Arcadia home by LA County Arboretum after 14 years of concerts

By John Farrell, correspondent

Responding to an unexplained last minute notice that, after fifteen years of successful concerts at the Los Angeles County Arboretum the orchestra that created concerts at the Arcadia venue will not be invited back, the California Philharmonic Orchestra, which originated concerts there in 1997, held a press conference Saturday morning to respond to the unexpected move by Los Angeles County, which was announced by press release Wednesday.

The California Philharmonic, which has performed at Arboretum for 14 years, will continue its 5-concert season this year at the Arboretum and is expected to protest the decision, which was announced to Orchestra Founder and Music Director Victor Vener in a brief cell-phone call from Richard Schulhof, CEO of the Arboretum, fifteen minutes before the press release was given to the media Wednesday night, according to the California Philharmonic's press release. According to that release, given to the press Saturday morning at a press conference at the Cal Phil's new office in Arcadia the Cal Phil Board of Directors have yet to be officially informed of the negotiations by either the County or the Arboretum Foundation.

Gathered at the press conference Saturday morning were Victor Vener, his son and long-time orchestra CEO Andre Vener, Robert W. Miller, member of the Cal Phil board since the orchestra's inception, Michael Arnold, principal clarinetist for the orchestra and Barbara Hicks, a long-time volunteer for the orchestra. Also present were more than 20 of the protesters who had picketed at the Arboretum, just up the street from the Cal Phil offices, protesting the ouster of the orchestra.

“48 hours after hearing the news we are here today to tell you about it, and we don't have any idea why they made this decision,” Andre Vener said at the opening of the press conference. “We don't know anything yet, we only have opinions.”

“We went to the Arboretum in 1996 and said 'We'd like to use your concert lawn,'” Miller said, “something no one had ever used before.

“On June 28, 1997 we had our first concert and it was bigger at that point than anything the Pasadena Pops put on. We never got even one electrical plug from the Arboretum. Everything we did was with our own money.” Since that time, according to Andre Vener and Miller, the orchestra has grown more successful, with a series of concerts at Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles, which are well-received and frequently sell out, as well as the outdoor concerts in Arcadia.

Since that first concert the orchestra has given 70 concerts and has paid all their bills and even managed a modest profit, Andre Vener pointed out, saying that the orchestra's reliance on tickets sales, 80 per cent of its budget, made it able to deal with the recent financial crisis.

Arnold added that the orchestra is fully supported by the musician's union, which has been at loggerheads with the Pasadena Symphony over the firing of the Pasadena Pops Musicians several years back. (They were replaced by Pasadena Symphony members.) Sixty regular musicians, plus another 30 part-time players and perhaps 200 chorale members perform in the Cal Phil every summer.

Hicks said that the annual volunteer force, made up in part of local high school students, has grown into a program that provides experience for students not only of classical music but of the skills needed for running concerts and other programs.

Saturdays new conference was only the first response to the action by the Arboretum, Victor Vener said.

 

Long Beach Symphony Orchestra Returns

By John Farrell

The Long Beach Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Enrique Arturo Diemecke returned to the Terrace Theater of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center Saturday with their fourth classical concert of the season, a mixture of Beethoven and Gershwin (with a little Barber added for spice) and with the knowledge that the LBSO, after union negotiations and a troubled-looking future, has found stability and a new life.

Last concert everyone was less than sure that the symphony, celebrating its 75^th season, would even be there for this Saturday's concert. Since then the Musician's Union has made concessions, a number of corporate donors have stepped up and paid off the orchestra's debt. The 2010-2011 season has been announced and everything looks like smooth sailing in the stormy financial seas.

It was momentous news, of course, but the orchestra appeared as unflustered and professional as ever. There was a spring in Diemecke's step as he jumped up to the podium, but then there is always a spring to his step. In other words, business as usual.

That business began with Samuel Barber's Second Essay for Orchestra, in honor of that composer's 100^th birthday this year. Barber wrote three expressive Essays: this one was premiered by Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic in 1938.

This essay is almost a concerto for orchestra, complex and simmering with a powerful, yet delicate power. It uses different elements of the orchestra to create at first a plain skeleton of music which rapidly grown into a broad melody, a second and then a final return to its original structure. Timpanist Gary Long got a work-out in his extensive section, and the work ended with a purity of sound and color.

Enrique Arturo Diemecke controls not only his orchestra, but his audience, with a gesture. Saturday even he couldn't keep the audience quite in control. Pianist Jon Nakamatsu was the soloists, and after he finished the rousing jazz-immersed first movement of George Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F the audience spontaneously, and against instructions, burst into loud and continual applause. They responded to a mild and humorous hand signal from the maestro for the next two movements, but at the end of the work it was too much, and the audience gave Nakamatsu three standing ovations. It was deserved.

Gershwin's Concerto in F introduced jazz to the symphony orchestra, and Nakamatsu played like a night-club habitué, playing with rhythmically complex rubato and plenty of attitude, and still cooperating with Diemecke's broad and thoughtful control.

The second half of the program was filled with the bucolic charms of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, the “Pastorale,” part of a year-long look at all nine Beethoven's symphonies. The work is big, lovely, sometimes delicate, sometimes filled with peasant dances, even once filled with thunder and lightning.

Beethoven wrote it as a celebration of nature's beauty and power, and the pleasure he derived from nature.

It quotes or imitates dances, it uses birdsong to introduce its most delicate section. And only Beethoven, who was a force of nature himself, would dare to change the key of a bird in mid-chirp to suit his work, as he does several time in the work. Genius is genius.

Diemecke exercised tight control over the orchestra: he even voicelessly whispered to the strings more than once, eliciting a marked delicacy. The woodwinds are key to the Sixth, and oboist Joe Stone, flute player Diane Alancraig, clarinetist Gary Bovyer and bassoonist Julie Feves all did major service as solo voices in the woodland choir.

But every voice in the orchestra, from the cellos in mass beginning a fugue of the theme (the same sort of fugue heard years later in the final movement of the Ninth Symphony) to timpani and percussion came together tom produce a work of beauty where the audience hardly breathed. It was also rewarded with a double standing ovation.

John Farrell is a Long Beach freelance writer. More of his articles can be found at www.byjohnfarrell@typepad.com

 

A Night in Berlin

What: Concerts by Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester

Where: Irvine Barclay Theater, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine; Royce Hall, UCLA

When: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 (Irvine;) Thursday, February 18, 2010 (UCLA) Both concerts at 8 p.m.

Tickets: $24 (Irvine;) $32-75 (UCLA)

Information: Irvine: (949) 854-4646, www.thebarclay.org, UCLA (310) 825-2101, www.uclalive.org

 

By John Farrell

 

It took a little while for the United States to catch on to Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester.

 

They started playing together more than 20 years ago, and their iconic and ironic blend of brilliant musicianship, Raabe's splendid and unequaled tenor voice and one gigantic hit made them almost immediately stars in Berlin and Paris.

 

That one song was a bit of an exception, really. “Kein Schwein ruft mich an,” a tango ballad in the style of the 1930s German jazz that has always been their main diet, was written by Raabe, unlike virtually everything else they play. The song, about a man so lonely that even pigs don't call him up, become a huge hit all over Germany and Europe, and those who hadn't heard of the Berlin-based band soon knew it from phone answering machines and cell phone ringers.

 

You found it everywhere in Europe, including a bierstube in Hannover, Germany, where this reporter first encountered it in the mid 90s. But you couldn't find their recordings anywhere in the United States, where the closest thing to recognition was the occasional record store clerk who said “No, we don't have anything, but you're the tenth person I've had ask about them.” And they didn't tour the U.S., either.

 

A decade and a half later that has all changed. Raabe came to UCLA with his one man show (with piano accompaniment) a decade ago, then brought the orchestra with him. They came back and added a performance at Carnegie Hall. They have returned triumphantly again to Carnegie Hall with concerts in Orange County and at UCLA, and now are bringing their new show, “A Night in Berlin,” to the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Wednesday, UCLA on Thursday, and then on to Oakland, Seattle, Boston, Manhattan and half a dozen more cities across the county. They have also performed in Japan and China, to wildly appreciative audiences. You don't have to use a secret word to find their recordings, either. In other words, they have arrived.

 

This time around they are also trying something new: a brand new concert built around new songs. “This is the first time I've done this program,” Raabe said in a phone interview from Berlin, his English, despite his protestations absolutely perfect with just enough of an accent to be charming. “It was important for me to have a concert (at the Barclay) to warm up for the tour.

 

“We have three or four old songs in the program. We have 'Dort Tanz Lulu' with the hand bells which is very popular and several others that we have done before. But most are songs that are new for us. Do you know 'What a Difference a Day Makes?' It was a big hit in America in the 70s, but it was originally written in the thirties.

 

“We are doing 'Smoke Gets in your Eyes' too and 'Miss Otis Regrets,' and many others. We are doing 'Chinatown,' too. We have a wonderful arrangement and a wild violin solo: it has a bit of swing and is still very elegant.” Because the concert at the Irvine Barclay is really a tryout, tickets are inexpensive. Beginning at Royce Hall regular ticket prices are charged.

 

“This is a big country,” Raabe said. “If you are in the plane crossing the country you really know that this is a big country. It is a miracle that I have an audience here.”

 

Maybe not a miracle, since the music is definitely western and Raabe, who sings in German, English, French and even a little Japanese, is as cosmopolitan and sophisticated as can be, a performer who is elegantly at home in dress clothes and sophisticated on stage, with a distant cool that is finely tuned to his audience. His voice has a large range and is perfectly suited to his material. Even his eyebrows are in tune. One raised eyebrow from Raabe has as much impact as a rock guitarist slamming his guitar down, and with so much less effort.

 

Not a miracle in America or Europe or even in Japan, where Raabe has a large and enthusiastic fan club. But in China, where the orchestra performed a few years back, well, miracle is quite the word.

 

“It was really the strangest experience,” Raabe said of the concerts. “They have 5000 years of culture, and yet they loved our music. They had no experience of it, but they understood it and our performance, which is music for they eyes, was wonderfully received. The critics said that we played with an enthusiasm tat they had never seen before.” Raabe and the Palast Orchester play some 80 or more concerts together every year in Europe and on tour. In addition Raabe makes some ten or more concerts as a vocal soloist, partly to try out new songs for the group. “I have to learn new songs and then I can sing them with the orchestra.”

 

The learning process is important, no doubt, but even at the beginning of their new American tour, the Palast Orchester and Max Raabe have twenty years together and plenty of experience. It is a big country, but Raabe and the orchestra are ready to conquer it.

Downey Symphont Premiers New Work

Heaven at Your Fingertips

What: Concert by the Downey Symphony Orchestra, Sharon Lavery, music director,
JoAnn Turovsky,  harp soloist, music by Mozart. Ravel, Mendelssohn and Robert Litton
Where: Downey Civic Theatre, 8435 Firestone Blvd., Downey
When: Saturday at 8 p.m., pre-concert lecture at 7:15 p.m.
Tickets: $10-$25
Information: (562) 403-2944, www.downeysymphony.org

By John Farrell

Special to the Press-Telegram

The Downey Symphony Orchestra has grown and matured over the past quarter of a century.

Former Music Director Tom Osborn took the orchestra to new professional heights in his nearly two-decade stewardship of the group.

Now, as it moves in to the 21st century under its new Music Director Sharon Lavery, who is her first full year in the job, it looks for new ways to expand its musical reach.

One, a special passion of Lavery’s, is to commission new music from local composers, something the orchestra has done before, but not, Lavery says, for nearly 25 years.

“I want to bring back the idea to the Downey Symphony of commissioning new music,” Lavery said in a recent phone conversation. “I want at least once a year to commission a new piece for the symphony.”

The first fruits of her idea will he heard this Saturday when the symphony presents as part of its second concert of the season the world premier of “Mendocino,” a work for solo harp and orchestra created for the Downey Symphonic Society and harp soloist JoAnn Turovsky by local composer Robert Litton.

“Mendocino” will be the featured work on a concert that will also include Mozart’s overture to  “The Impresario”,” Ravel’s “Introduction and Allegro” featuring Turovsky on the harp and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3, the “Scottish.”

The concert begins at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Downey Civic Theater. Composer Litton will join Lavery for a pre-concert discussion at 7:15 p.m.

“I think JoAnn Turovsky is one of the greatest harpists anywhere,” Lavery said. “She is the harpist for the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Pasadena Symphony, amongst many other groups. She is also the leading harp player in motion pictures and television.

“If you have heard solo harp in any movie in the last two decades in it’s a very good chance you heard JoAnn playing solo harp. In the film ‘Angela’s Ashes’ composer John Williams wrote a long solo just for JoAnn to play.” Turovsky is also a close friend of Maestra Lavery. “I wanted to bring her to Downey to expose Downey to her work,” she said.

The evening’s concert will open with Mozart’s “The Impresario” overture, the opening of a work that was written for an operatic competition which pitted Mozart against Antonio Salieri. The singspiel Mozart wrote has only four arias and some very clunky humor, but the overture is a lively and vigorous one.

The Ravel, a work he wrote on commission for the French harp manufacturer Erard, is a small work, featuring the harp, a string quartet and a flute and clarinet. It uses the harp’s range of tone and dexterity to full effect, and is one of the first important works in the harp repertory.

Lavery pairs it with Mendelssohn’s Scottish” symphony, a work inspired by composer’s trip to Scotland in 1829. If so, it was a work long in gestation, since it wasn’t published until 17 years later. “The symphony is often called Mendelssohn’s ‘Pastoral’ symphony,” Lavery said, “and I thought it would pair well with the elegance of the Ravel.”

The final concert of the Downey Symphony’s three-concert regular season is scheduled for Saturday March 28 of this year when a program featuring 17-year old violist Nigel Armstrong, winner of the Downey Symphony Young Artist Competition, is scheduled to play the Violin Concerto No. 1 by Prokofiev. Also on the program is the Brahms Symphony No. 2.

This article appeared in the Long Beach Pres-elegram Friday, January 30, 2009

All-Tchaikovsky Concert Is a Family Affair
 

By John Farrell

Special to the Press-Telegram

All orchestras have personalities, and, over time, those personalities become easily recognized, like an old friends face.

The Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, in the middle of its eighth year under the baton of Music Director Enrique Arturo Diemecke, has such a personality. A sense of family, first of all,  with a core group of musicians who have played together for years and become the kind of supportive musical team that conductors and audience always hope for. A sense of power, as well, for Diemecke has never shied away from the big orchestral sound and the challenges it makes, and the symphony has learned to provide sheer power, elegant power, shimmering power, with the same easy agility a baseball slugger uses to drive a fastball over the left field wall.

Both the power and the family connection were on display last Saturday at the Terrace Theater of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center as Diemecke led his band through an evening of the powerful orchestral delights of three big pieces of music by Tchaikovsky, that late 19th century master of orchestral passion and instrumental grace.

The family connection was most apparent in the brilliant Violin Concerto, with the orchestra’s long-time Concertmaster Roger Wilkie as soloist. Diemecke has long made a point of showcasing orchestra principles as soloists, and this wasn’t Wilkie’s first time in front of the orchestra. It may well have been his best, though, and it is hard to remember a performance of this popular concerto, or many others equally as well-known, delivered with such confidence and power and physical presence.

From the start, with his introduction of the moving primary theme of the concerto, it was clear that Wilkie’s violin was going to rule the performance. His instrument has a powerful, dominant voice that was always strong against even the most powerful orchestral passages, always crisp and bursting with energy.

Equally important was Wilkie’s relaxed, almost playful approach to the work. He clearly felt confident in his musical family’s support, and in Diemecke’s cooperation, and there were moments when he seemed almost casual about rests, plucked notes and high speed passages full of high speed fingerings and double stops.

It was exhilarating to watch him, sometimes serious, sometimes playful. His reading of the solo first-movement cadenza was a lengthy moment of bravura technique, surpassing lyricism and deep emotion. Diemecke asks that his audiences not applaud between movement of a work, and they usually respect his wishes, but this first movement provoked applause so lengthy Diemecke had to gesture for quiet before the work continued to its brilliant finish.

The evening opened with the dark colored tone poem “Francesca da Rimini,” a work that calls for a big orchestra and a huge sound, violent and even a but frightening, as Tchaikovsky tells the story of a woman condemned to hell in Dante’s “Inferno” for making love to her husband’s brother. An imaginative listener might hear a little autobiography in the work, at least as far as unsuccessful goes, and can’t miss the laments of those in the swirling smokes and mist of one of the lowest rings of hell. Diemecke calls this one of his favorite works, and he led it with precise detail and perfect control.

The evening ended with the composer’s “Little Russia” symphony, his Second, a work inspired by the Ukraine, known as “Little Russia” then, and filled with tunes that are drawn from or inspired by folk music.

Though the work was written early in his career, it still has all the hallmarks of Tchaikovsky’s orchestral writing: brilliant brass passages, shimmering effects in the woodwinds, a rich use of the strings and plenty of powerful but carefully used percussion. Principal French Horn Joseph Meyer played the daunting and exposed open horn passages with perfection, and the dance-filled third movement was a delight of rhythmic energy.

John Farrell is a Long Beach freelance writer. This article appeared in the Long Bach press-Telegram Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Chamber Music for Families

What: Concerts by Chamber Players of Los Angeles,
presented by the Golden State Pops orchestra
Where: Grand Annex, 434 West Sixth St., San Pedro
When: Sunday at 3 p.m., Sunday, March 8 at 3 p.m.,
Sunday, May 31 at 3 p.m.
Tickets: $15, $10 for students, seniors and military
members with identification.

By John Farrell

Chamber music, classical music written for small groups of musicians and intended to be performed in small rooms, or chambers, is the often-neglected cousin of large orchestral music.

Big orchestras use big halls and attract big audiences.

Chamber music, on the other hand, was often written for noble families who would hear it at small parties in their private palaces.

Those noble families are long gone, and the modern equivalent rock out in house parties in Beverly Hills mansions.

That is a shame, because chamber music, written by all of the great composers of the last three centuries, is every bit as exciting as their bigger works, and because of its intimacy, it is much more accessible.

When you can find it.

The Golden State Pops Orchestra has combined with the Chamber Players of Los Angeles under Music Director John Kennedy to do something about that problem.

Three Sunday weekend afternoons, beginning this Sunday, the Chamber Players will present “Chamber Music for Families,” an adventurous concert series intended to introduce the delights of small scale music to children and adults. All three performances will be at the Grand Annex, just a few steps away from the Warner Grand Theatre, the GSPO’s regular home.

The Chamber Players of Los Angeles specializes in small-scale user-friendly concerts of this sort, according to Kennedy. “The goal of our group is to bring affordable classical music to people in our area,” Kennedy said in a phone call from his California State University, Los Angeles office. “We want our concerts to be comfortable and family-friendly, so the audience can ask questions about the music. It’s a way to hook them and get them to enjoy classical music.” This series of concerts, Kennedy said, came about from conversations with Linda Grimes, GSPO’s executive director.

Sunday’s concert will feature a performance of the Septet in E-Flat major by Beethoven, which will be preceded by a fifteen minute-long introduction of the instruments of the septet and discussion of the music by Chamber Player’s member Larry Kohorn.

“Aires Tropicales” is the name of the March 8 concert and of a composition by Cuban Jazz composer Paquito D’Rivera written for woodwind quintet. The concert will feature the wind players of the Chamber Players. It will be an exciting introduction to the woodwind instruments, and a chance to explore the relationship between classical music and jazz.

Kennedy will join members of the Chamber Players for the final concert of the series on May 31, called “A Musical Potpourri.” The program will be a musical journey through music of various ages, including dances from many eras and jazz-influenced works.

All three family concerts are set to begin at 3 p.m., and will include a break for refreshments. The Golden State Pops orchestra’s next regular concert is set for Saturday, February 7 at 8 p.m., a program called “Pops Greatest Hits” celebrating the orchestra’s fifth year at the Warner Grand Theatre.

This story appeared in the Torrance Daily Breeze and Long Beach Press-Telegram Sunday, January 25 2009.