2008
January 15, 2008
Berlioz, Prokofiev and Contemporary Composer Ingram Marshall Highlight LJS&C Concert
The La Jolla Symphony & Chorus (LJS&C) presents its third concert of the 53rd season on February 9-10. Music Director Steven Schick conducts the orchestra in a program that begins with Ingram Marshall's stunning Kingdom Come and the lyrical Violin Concerto No. 1 by Sergei Prokofiev, featuring 2007 Young Artists Competition winner Pasha Tseitlin. The program concludes with Hector Berlioz's exciting and revolutionary Symphonie Fantastique.
Ingram Marshall scored Kingdom Come for full orchestra and digital audiotape. This moving elegy to victims of the Bosnian conflict incorporates the composer's recordings of a Croatian hymn, a liturgy from a Serbian church, and a song fragment sung by a Bosnian Muslim. The orchestra parts blend or merge with the taped music, cascading upward or downward—sometimes both.
"Ingram Marshall is one of my favorite American composers. This piece was written in memory of Marshall's brother-in-law, a journalist who was killed in the war zone in the former Yugoslavia," says Schick. "The work offers an imagined landscape in which the sounds of Serbian and Muslim musicians are present in the performance by pre-recorded tape. This begs the question: why, if these types of music can co-exist, was it so difficult for the people who made the music to co-exist?"
Ingram Marshall will be in attendance at the weekend's concerts and at the pre-concert lectures.
Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique is regarded as one of the most important and representative pieces of the early Romantic period. It is programmatic, telling the story of a gifted artist who poisoned himself out of despair of a hopeless love. "The realm of imagination in Marshall's piece is extended through this work, the ultimate fantasy piece," says Schick.
Imaginative scoring in the Prokofiev Violin Concerto rounds out a provocative and colorful concert. Pasha Tseitlin, considered to be one of the most promising young violinists today, will solo with the orchestra. Tseitlin made his orchestral debut at the age of nine performing Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons." After graduating from the California Institute of Music, he was granted full scholarship at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California.
The performances take place February 9-10, 2008 in Mandeville Auditorium at UCSD. Concert times are Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 3:00 p.m. A pre-concert lecture, led by noted program annotator Eric Bromberger, is offered one hour prior to concert times. Ticket prices are $26, $22 and $15. Parking is free. To purchase tickets or for more information, call the LJS&C office at (858) 534-4637 or visit www.lajollasymphony.com.
The La Jolla Symphony & Chorus, San Diego's oldest and largest community orchestra and chorus, is a non-profit musical performing group dedicated to inspiring San Diego with the joy of music. Its 110-person orchestra and 130-person chorus perform groundbreaking orchestral and choral music along with traditional favorites from the classical repertoire. During the 53rd season, maestro Steven Schick shares the podium with David Chase, LJS&C choral director, performing works by Antonín Dvořák, Hector Berlioz, Igor Stravinsky, Philip Glass, Edgard Varèse, John Luther Adams, and more.
