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.

"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.