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Livermore-Amador Symphony continues its 55th regular season with “The Human Spirit and the Natural World” on April 14 at Livermore’s Bankhead Theater.
The concert will include Charles Ives’ “The Unanswered Question”; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”; and Violin Concerto in D Major by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, featuring Madeline Adkins, concertmaster of the Utah Symphony, as soloist.
“The Unanswered Question” will open the concert.
“Charles Ives’ ‘Unanswered Question’ sets the stage for this program, which really takes us on a philosophical, spiritual musical journey,” music director Lara Webber said.
“Ives separates the music into three distinct groups beginning with the strings playing simple, ethereal consonant harmony that seems to be just a natural extension of silence. After a time, the solo trumpet sounds out what Ives called ‘the perennial question of existence,’ which is answered by a woodwind quartet, playing dissonant, discordant music,” she continued.
“The harmonious strings never stop, while the trumpet questions continue to be asked, and the woodwinds seem ever more agitated in struggling to answer.”
Next, the orchestra will perform Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D Major. Korngold was an Austrian-born child prodigy who became a naturalized American citizen. Webber described him as “a composer of astounding talent, invention and skill.”
“To my ears, he is born of Mahler and Strauss. His music embodies the romanticism and impressionism of the 19th century, and the modernism of the 20th,” she said.
Soloist Adkins became concertmaster of the Utah Symphony in September 2016 after 10 years as associate concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She has served as guest concertmaster of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Oregon Symphony and the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra in Chicago.
“The Korngold concerto is, above all, lush with fabulous melodies,” Adkins said. “His background as a film composer (in fact many themes being taken directly from his films) results in evocative and memorable music that the audience may still be humming at night’s end.”
“This concerto is exciting, intimate and over the top, all at once,” Webber said. “It is an absolute powerhouse for the soloist, demanding everything the violin can do, musically and technically.”
The concert will conclude with Beethoven’s “Pastoral,” which he wrote in 1808, at a difficult time in his life.
“Beethoven was struggling personally, with oncoming deafness, rejection in love, traveling constantly during a politically turbulent time,” Webber explained. “When I think of all he was going through, this symphony stands so completely apart as a spiritual release. The overall effect captures what it feels like to give yourself over to the beauty and power of nature. In a way, it is the most wonderful answer to Ives’ question at the beginning of the program.”
The April 14 concert begins at 8 p.m., with a prelude talk from 7-7:30 p.m. The Symphony Guild will host a post-concert reception in the lobby. Ticket are $25-$35. Go to www.bankheadtheater.org; the Bankhead Theater ticket office at 2400 First St., Livermore; or call 373-6800.
Editor’s note: Patricia Boyle, president of the California Writers Club Tri-Valley branch, has been writing about the Livermore-Amador Symphony for six years.
Editor’s note: Patricia Boyle, president of the California Writers Club Tri-Valley branch, has been writing about the Livermore-Amador Symphony for six years.
