’Lookin’ forward to Holiday Delight!

Some of our most memorable moments in live performances happen from the things we don’t plan.

For our upcoming Holiday Pops, I’m told Santa will be making a return appearance. Now, it’s true that many events around this time of year might book some guy wearing a Santa suit, but our show is different—we get the real Santa at ours. :-) Our Visitor From The North Pole always throws us a jolly curve—what surprises has he got in his bag this year?

And how about our soloist, Eric Margiore, who came to our rescue in our Italian Pops, Festa Italiana! in 2006? He came flying in as an emergency replacement and stole the show with his marvelous voice and captivating stage presence. He’s got a great deadpan sense of humor, too. At one point, someone’s cell phone went off. Without missing a beat, Eric chimed in, “Tell her I’m busy.”

Magnificent Mozart

How do we love Mozart? When we “count the ways,” we find his genius in practically every Classic genre: symphonies, concertos, chamber music, operas—you name it. Our Classics III concerts present three different facets of Mozart, and the connections are as fascinating as the contrasts.

We begin with one of Mozart’s most intriguing overtures. Influenced by Turkish culture deemed exotic at the time, Mozart’s rescue opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio, was one of his first to feature a German libretto rather than using Italian. Quintessential Italian elements still prevail in the celebrated Overture, though: bubbly fast outer sections frame a slower, more lyrical central episode. The “Turkish” flavor is imparted by piccolo, triangle, cymbals, and bass drum—standards today, but simply not part of the normal symphonic palate at the time!

It was the Italian three-part opera overture, created long before Mozart, that gave birth to the symphony as an independent form. Over the decades, another movement was added, creating the traditional four movements we’re used to. It’s thus quite unusual to find Mozart, at the zenith of his career, circling back to operatic roots with a three-movement design in his elegant Symphony No. 38, written for performances in Prague. There’s another operatic connection—the first movement features a rhythmic figure that’s an unmistakable precursor to his Overture to The Magic Flute.

If you saw the movie Amadeus you may have picked up a creditable portrayal of Mozart’s character, but the notion of Salieri finishing off the Requiem is pure cinematic license. It was actually Franz Süssmayr who finished off the masterpiece Mozart had been working on until his death. There have been other more contemporary reconstructions, but Süssmayr’s dates from Mozart’s time, and has become known and treasured over the centuries—this is the beloved version we shall perform. A few interesting notes:

·        The Stockton Chorale will be singing in Germanicized Latin, since Mozart was moving in that direction with his operas at the end of his career. Listen for “Agnus” with a hard “g” or “Requiem” pronounced “Reqviem”!

·        Mozart almost never referred to one of his middle names as “Amadeus,” except on occasion as a joke. He usually signed his name “Wolfgang Amadè Mozart”—so we’ve gone to printing his name that way in our programs for the past decade or so.

·        The piece calls for two basset horns—they’re a kind of intermediary between the clarinet and contemporary bass clarinet. Often performers can’t get a hold of these relatively rare instruments, but we’ve got ’em! Come to our preconcert discussions (45 minutes before each performance) and enjoy principal Patti Shands deliver some “show and tell” with the basset horn.

Kids Have That Special Knack

Our annual Steppin’ Out programs were a smash—six capacity audiences in Hutchins Street Square, Lodi, and Atherton Auditorium, Stockton, for a total of approximately 6,000 youngsters. Our program, “Construction Zone: Musicians at Work!” focused on some of the forms music takes: fugue, theme and variations, sonata form, ABA form, and rondo.

The young audiences were wonderful, and they were really “getting it.” And yet, as any experienced teacher will tell you, even if we feel we’ve accomplished a great “teaching moment,” the kids will soon find a way to bring us back to earth. At one point we had showed how the “A” section returns “in disguise” in Shostakovich’s Scherzo movement from his Fifth. After the demo, we played the piece through and I knew the kids were understanding the architecture of the music. So I turned to them while we were performing and asked “where are we now?” The answer came back—“Lodi.”

Kids have that special knack.

"Eternal Quest" Insights

Will we ever discover the answers to all the important questions in life? Perhaps not, but it is the noble search for answers that defines us. Our Classics II concerts, entitled “Eternal Quest,” embody that sense of wondering and exploration.

Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde portrays a search for eternal love, based on the Medieval legend and infused with a healthy dose of Schopenhauer’s 19^th-century philosophy. The drama’s famous Prelude and Love Death, with passages unfolding in beauty yet defying resolution, create the “insatiable longing” of the main characters—the harmonic language and melodic technique that Wagner developed would influence the course of music history.

Bloch was in the process of making a musical setting of King Solomon’s book of Ecclesiastes when he came to an important realization: rather than using sung text, his work could gain an entirely new dimension with the voiceless beauty of the cello. The resulting masterpiece is Schelomo, expressing Solomon’s quest for meaning. Taking on the powerful and compassionate solo role is Israeli cellist Amit Peled, a fast-rising international star.

Charles Ives was one of America’s most forward-looking experimentalists, stretching the imagination and employing concepts way ahead of his time. A brief work written around 1906, The Unanswered Question delivers a novel take on the perennial question of existence, with three independent streams of music separated by space and time.

Elgar’s beloved Enigma Variations is a set of character tributes to dear friends. Here the searching and questioning is our fate rather than the composer’s. Elgar claimed his main theme was based on a famous tune, yet he never revealed his source, and the resulting thematic mystery remains debated to this day! No matter, for the work takes us on a splendid journey in Romantic style, artfully juxtaposing intimate and grandiose effects and leading to an exultant conclusion.

Comin’ Up Aces

We came off the stage from our Stockton Symphony season open with a real sense of exhilaration, and loved the satisfaction of communicating with our audience through music. One of the most exciting—and challenging!—aspects of live performance is that we must “be our art” right at the moment. It doesn’t matter how well we did in our rehearsals, or even when it was time for the Saturday performance, how well we did in the Thursday night performance. We have to rise to each occasion with new heights of zeal and artistic excellence, ’cause it counts at that moment. That’s the “elegant risk” of live performance. That’s why it’s so exciting to play for you, our beloved audience, and that’s why live concerts will never die out.

The opening of Beethoven’s Fidelio Overture is notoriously difficult for the horns. The music is so exposed and pure—it’s more than walking on eggshells, it’s like walking on eggshells naked! Our horns aced it.

The Bruch Violin Concerto is a masterpiece combining sweeping lyricism with extremely demanding pyrotechnics. Not only did our guest artist Elena Urioste rise superbly to the occasion, but—here’s a bit of inside news—she did it with a cold. ’Ya know that kind of feeling you get when a cold first sets in—everything in the head gets all congested and it’s hard to think straight, much less hear properly? That’s what Elena was going through. But she’s a real pro and the show must and did go on. And most importantly, nobody could have known—’cause Elena was triumphant.

Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony is a true masterpiece of the 20^th century, yet for some inexplicable reason, it’s performed much less often than, say, Shostakovich’s Fifth. Many in our orchestra had never performed this glorious work before. On second thought, maybe the reason for its relative infrequency isn’t all that inexplicable—it’s hard! There isn’t a single principal player or instrumental section that doesn’t get some virtuose moment to tackle. The musicians of the Stockton Symphony are fabulous. They scored a real victory.

Do we feel a sense of letdown after a concert set? You bet. But the wonderful thing is, we know there’s always something great waiting for us in the near future: it’s the next concert, it’s the next live moment.

The Start to an Inspiring Season - Insights on "Heroism with Heart"

The live symphonic experience captivates us with the same sort of "adventure in our seat" that we get from the movies - taking us on a journey through the emotions. Composers have always been fascinated with a sense of drama and victory, and our season opener, "Heroism with Heart" showcases this inspiration in a powerful trio of pieces.

Launching our adventure is Beethoven's Overture to Fidelio, in which the heroine Leonore disguises herself as a man to rescue Florestan from unjust imprisonment. Beethoven actually composed four overtures to his only opera: the first three were entitled "Leonore" Overtures, and the present curtain raiser was the composer's final word on the subject. We're grabbed by the initial "teaser," moved by the ensuing lyricism, and stirred by the fervent drive to final victory.

In Bruch's celebrated Violin Concerto the soloist becomes our heroine with her sizzling virtuosity and all-encompassing emotional range - and what a fabulous soloist! Young Elena Urioste - of Mexican-Basque heritage, prizewinner of the Sphinx Competition - has been enthralling audiences as she tours the globe.

Near the end of World War II Prokofiev created one of the twentieth century's masterpieces with his Fifth Symphony. Welcome news of a recent victory over the Third Reich came during the premiere, and the audience burst into spontaneous applause. We bring our own experiences of the many guises of heroism to this orchestral epic, as Prokofiev leads us through a dramatic and powerful first movement, shows his witty and sarcastic side in the second, evokes the soaring romanticism of his Romeo and Juliet in the third, and projects sassy ebullience in his infectious finale.

We have a really exciting season in front of us with outstanding guest artists, so as the lights dim, sit back and be transported by the pure inspiration of the music.