|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The finale of Livermore-Amador Symphony’s 55th regular season will be “Romantic Expressions” at 8 p.m. June 2 at the Bankhead Theater in Livermore.
The program opens with “Roman Carnival Overture,” Hector Berlioz’s most popular.
Music director Lara Webber said the overture is “sparkling, dazzling music.”
“This overture has it all,” Webber said. “Exuberant energy and sentimental song, rhythmic drive, humor and a full range of orchestral color and texture. Berlioz is a musical personality like no other, and we feel it immediately in his music.”
Next, cellist Jennifer Kloetzel will join the orchestra to perform Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor.
Webber describes the concerto as “deeply personal music, written in the midst of World War I and in reaction to the extraordinary losses and destruction.”
“This is music full of profound grief, seared with hope and poignant memory,” she said.
Kloetzel is an adjunct professor of cello and chamber music at UC Santa Barbara and a founder of the San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet. She has a long history with Elgar’s Cello Concerto.
“I’ve had a relationship with the piece since I was 15,” Kloetzel said. “It’s a personal, poignant and private piece.”
“The concerto is cyclical: It starts and ends in the same way and goes through a vast journey in the center,” she explained. “It’s a brilliantly conceived work — unique to Elgar and the time, and overall, the work is a little dark. Yet the third movement is like a fervent prayer.”
“There’s something really special there,” Kloetzel added. “I love considering how works of art survive the test of time, like this hauntingly elegant concerto.”
The concert will conclude with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2, “Little Russian.”
“We balance the grief and loss felt in the music of Elgar with unabashed joy and humor in perhaps Tchaikovsky’s sunniest symphony,” Webber said. “Rooted in Ukrainian folk song, this symphony is loaded with memorable melody. Its masterful pacing and inventive variation create surprise and excitement all along the way.
“There are moments where we feel like the ballet is beginning in the midst of a symphony,” she added. “The finale takes the roof off the building. Count the cymbal crashes at the end.”
The 8 p.m. concert will be preceded by a prelude talk from 7-7:30 p.m. The Symphony Guild will host a post-concert reception in the lobby.
Tickets are $25-$35. Purchase at www.bankheadtheater.org; at the ticket office, 2400 First St., Livermore; or by calling 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.
