La Jolla Symphony & Chorus

Saturday Concerts at 7:30 PM
Sunday Concerts at 2:00 PM
Mandeville Auditorium, UCSD

Our season-long survey of the music of Stravinsky begins with a program of music from Paris. Stravinsky’s moving memorial for Debussy is followed by music of Debussy himself: our Young Artists Competition winner, Charissa Barger, plays his dances for harp and string orchestra. We conclude with the sharpest of contrasts: Ravel’s charming tales of childhood innocence are followed by Stravinsky’s savage (and world-changing) Rite of Spring.

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Conductor's Note

Two brilliant folk-tales from the early twentieth century: Stravinsky’s portrait of a folk wedding in pagan Russia, featuring four pianists, chamber chorus, and Lux Boreal dancers choreographed by UCSD’s Allyson Green; and Bartok’s magical story of nine young hunters transformed into wild stags scored for orchestra and chorus. Plus two much more recent pieces: György Ligeti’s daring work for 100 metronomes, each at a different tempo, and David Lang’s rambunctious Grind to a Halt.

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Conductor's Note

A program of stark – and very beautiful – drama.  We open with Verdi’s searing overture to a tale of bloody revenge, and we conclude with a classic: Brahms’ mighty First Symphony.  Between them comes John Adams’ setting of Walt Whitman’s poems about tending the wounded of the Civil War, and this season’s Thomas Nee Commission, Nicholas Deyoe’s still getting rid of.

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Conductor's Note

A concert that explores Stravinsky’s classical roots. Mozart’s famous overture leads to Stravinsky’s most classical work, his Symphony in C, which he modeled on Beethoven’s First Symphony, and we conclude with that symphony. Along the way a very different Stravinsky: his Ebony Concerto, written for clarinet soloist and Woody Herman’s jazz orchestra.

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Conductor's Note

Choral Director David Chase leads a program inspired by the many faces of spring. Grieg’s beautiful lament for string orchestra is a perfect introduction to Schumann’s robust “Spring” Symphony.  Chorus and soloists join the orchestra for quite a different Spring Symphony, Benjamin Britten’s setting of fourteen poems about the coming of spring, a preview of the chorus’s upcoming Carnegie Hall debut.

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We conclude our survey of the music of Stravinsky with his most popular work, The Firebird.  The concert opens with the premiere of Tintinnabulation by Igor Korneitchouk, professor of music at Mesa College and longtime La Jolla Symphony violinist. UCSD faculty member Aleck Karis is soloist in Barber’s magnificent Piano Concerto, which won the Pulitzer Prize exactly fifty years ago.

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