Musical Radar

When we’re lucky, it just clicks. We’re so used to the idea of “no pain, no gain” that we’re amazed by those few occasions when we can achieve something wonderful with a minimum of effort—it does happen just once in a while! That’s the way it was working with our recent piano soloist, Martina Filjak, playing beautiful performances of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. She just makes it happen, and it was so easy to perform with her.

One of the many fascinating parts of my job is getting to work with quite a few world-class soloists. Sometimes I’ve met and worked with these artists before, but just as often we’re meeting for the first time during a concert set—it’s about 50/50. In this case, I had never met Martina before last week—but it was certainly about time, we’ve been trying to book her with the Symphony for quite a while, and the schedules finally meshed.

Last Monday afternoon, Martina played through her concerto for me in Atherton Auditorium—just the two of us were in the hall. Listening to her, it was obvious right away by her sense of timing what a treasure these performances would be. We made just a couple of suggestions to each other, but she made this difficult work so easy—working in rehearsals and concerts with Martina was a breeze.

All great artists have a great feeling for rubato—when to stretch the tempo, when to push ahead, and so on. But even within that keen sense, there’s what I call musical radar. Some great artists play in such a way that when a stretch is about to happen, she/he telegraphs the ideas in advance. We’ve been so fortunate at the Stockton Symphony to be able to work with so many soloists who possess specifically that gift of creating poetry through musical time. When you’re working with a great artist like Martina, the radar is wonderful. You don’t even have to look at her, you can sense what’s coming. I sometimes think the nonverbal communication you get when collaborating with soloists and with an orchestra is the closest we can get to telepathy.

Vibrant Colors and Rhythms Open Symphony Season

’Hard to imagine, but in the early 1930s most of the U.S. had never seen nor heard some percussion instruments we now take for granted—bongos, maracas, claves (wood blocks), and the guiro (notched gourd played with stick). The fascinatin’ dance rhythms of Latin America were just beginning to take hold, and two iconic American composers contributed to that enthusiasm, each traveling south of the border and bringing back a musical souvenir. These inspirations bookend our season opener with the Stockton Symphony: George Gershwin’s catchy Cuban Overture, inspired by the rumba; and Aaron Copland’s vivacious El Salón México, incorporating folk melodies while evoking a dance hall in Mexico City.

This colorful program also explores the intriguing Gershwin-Ravel connection. French composer Maurice Ravel had traveled to New York in the late ’20s, becoming infected with a healthy dose of Gershwin’s current take on jazz. Likewise, Gershwin had traveled to Paris, getting acquainted with Ravel’s music on his home turf, and he began to orchestrate his American jazz elements with a bit of the French master’s sophistication.

Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G continues to show the composers’ mutual admiration, incorporating wonderful elements of jazz harmony and rhythm. Our fabulous soloist, visiting Stockton for the first time, is the international pianist sensation Martina Filjak, winner of the 2009 Cleveland Piano Competition. We’re all eagerly anticipating her performances of Ravel’s virtuoso vehicle, and you may want to check out her accomplishments in detail at http://www.martinafiljak.com/.

The second half of our program explores two very different facets of Aaron Copland. The Orchestral Variations, in the compact space of 12 or 13 minutes, shows a dramatic, powerful, brooding side of the composer that we don’t often get to hear. Rounding out the evening in rousing contrast is El Salón México described above, exhibiting the same exuberance of those familiar Copland “cowboy” ballets, like Rodeo.
What a great way to open the concert season—we look forward to having you join us!

Thursday, September 22, at 8:00 p.m., repeated on Saturday, September 24 at 6:00 p.m. at Atherton Auditorium on the campus of San Joaquin Delta College.

Purchase tickets at 209-951-0196 or visit our website by clicking on the link below.
stocktonsymphony.org

Blockbuster Classics Season Finale—Soloist Back by Popular Demand

Pianist Chu-Fang Huang is back! Having taken our breath away a few seasons ago, she has returned to deliver Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, beloved for its hallmark Romantic tunes and dazzling virtuosity. Just a few weeks ago, Chu-Fang was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant. This is an amazing honor. One can't even apply for one of these grants—the Avery Fisher talent scouts, after an extensive process, simply select an artist for the award. Chu-Fang now joins the company of other distinguished awardees, including Joshua Bell, Edgar Meyer, and Christopher O'Riley. We're all looking forward to Chu-Fang's stunning performances with the Stockton Symphony, infused by her vivacious personality and consummate musicianship.

Bookending "Rach 2" are two favorites from the Russian symphonic repertoire—Glinka's Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila, and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite—hence we've entitled our season finale "From Russia with Love." The great Russian composers had a way of creating themes that instantly appeal to us with a folklike character: sometimes these melodies are actually based on folk songs, but more often the composers create a bit of genius by crafting a tune that simply sounds folklike. This is certainly true in Glinka's overture. Once we get past the pyrotechnics of the opening (listen to our orchestra fly!), we hear the lyrical second theme that sounds instantly familiar—even if we've never heard it before. Stravinsky had this same genius in spades. His Firebird suite became so popular during his lifetime that he conducted it almost 1,000 times, and now the music has permeated our global culture so thoroughly that we even hear the music featured in the skating routines of the Winter Olympics.

Our season finale provides a real tour de force for both our guest artist and our symphony—we look forward to seeing you there!

My Invitation to Mr. Forbes

In response to Forbes magazine labeling Stockton as our country’s “most miserable” city, I wanted to come up with something positive, which is what prompted me to invite Mr. Steve Forbes to visit us here in Stockton. Following is the invitation letter, which has since been printed in the Record and forwarded to several folks by email.

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Mr. Malcolm Stevenson “Steve” Forbes, Jr., Editor-in-Chief                                    February 11, 2011

Forbes Magazine

60 50^th Avenue

New York, NY 10011

Dear Mr. Forbes:

We in Stockton, California—residents of the city again dubbed by your magazine as our country’s “most miserable”—would love to have you visit us! We’d like to show you a great time. We’d be honored to have you as our guest at our season finale of the Stockton Symphony either April 7 or April 9. We’d love it if you could stay a day or two—check out our interesting blend of businesses, visit the Haggin Museum and art galleries, eat at some great and reasonably-priced restaurants, play a round of golf, take in another show, check out the University of the Pacific and San Joaquin Delta College—you name it.

Yes, we know that your magazine has criteria for determining which cities in America will be labeled “most miserable,” so please don’t reply by telling us that’s why we get the prize. Instead, we’d like some frank answers to a couple of questions:

1) Honestly, do you think city residents across our nation measure their relative state of happiness or misery by your criteria?

2) What is your magazine actually accomplishing by coming out with an annual list of “miserable” cities? Is this good business for America?

We’re not deluded here in Stockton. We know we have a big measure of the troubles that afflict practically all cities in the U.S. And yes—we admit it—if you visit we’d go out of our way to make sure you have a good time. But isn’t that the point? Isn’t the real pulse of a city felt by the personalities of the people and what they do?

So please visit us, Mr. Forbes. Give our office a call at (209) 951-0196. We really want to meet you and show you the Stockton we know and love. I’ll bet you a lunch we won’t be the most miserable experience you’ve ever had.

Yours in eager anticipation,

Peter Jaffe

Music Director and Conductor

Stockton Symphony

cc: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento News and Review, Modesto Bee, Stockton Record

’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.