Tag: Classical Music

On Bernstein, Root Beer Floats, and the Jazzy Side of Beethoven

Music Director Donato Cabrera and pianist Charlie Albright reprise a celebrated collaboration for the California Symphony’s 2018–19 season opener.


We asked Music Director Donato Cabrera and returning virtuoso Charlie Albright about the upcoming BEETHOVEN & BERNSTEIN concert at the Lesher Center — Sept. 23 at 4PM.

California Symphony: Donato, you intended for the 2018–19 season opener to commemorate Leonard Bernstein’s centennial. Can you tell us why you selected these pieces of music for the program?

Donato Cabrera (DC): The works on this program not only celebrate Bernstein, the composer, but the impact he had on what it meant to program a concert as an American Music Director. The two works composed by Bernstein reflect what I believe to be the most infectious and joyful of his music. I can’t think of more joyous curtain-raiser than his Overture to Candide.

And, what celebration of Bernstein’s music would be complete without a performance of Symphonic Dances from West Side Story! This suite is basically the ‘greatest hits’ from this ever-popular musical.

We also remember Bernstein as being a great pianist and communicator and Charlie Albright’s charismatic approach to music making, paired with one of the most dramatic piano concertos ever written, is a perfect way to remember Bernstein, the pianist. And finally Bernstein, as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, was known as a great interpreter and proponent for music by living composers. Performing Gabriela Lena Frank’s Three American Dances for Orchestra is a way of keeping Bernstein’s mission alive and well.

CS: Why bring Charlie back to Walnut Creek?

DC: Charlie brings an enthusiasm to making music that is infectious and unique. He lives in the moment, whether it’s at the piano or in conversation and, for me, the most inspired and inspirational way to live! I’m looking forward to his interpretation of the Beethoven concerto because I think his personality will be a perfect fit.

“The entire audience stood and applauded until Albright returned for an encore of pianistic wildfire, and then for a second encore — Great Balls of Fire. Embracing a program of American idioms, Albright dispatched this with even more fire, and with glissandos that zippered up and down the keyboard.” — Adam Broner at RepeatPerformances.org on Albright’s 2016 California Symphony debut.

CS: How about you, Charlie? How is it for you, coming back to the California Symphony after your January 2016 debut?

Charlie Albright (CA): I’m absolutely thrilled to be returning to Walnut Creek, playing again with the amazing California Symphony, and working with my good friend and phenomenal artist Maestro Donato Cabrera. The last time we all worked together playing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was a blast (as was playing Great Balls of Fire), and I really can’t wait until we all get to share the wonderful Beethoven 3rd Piano Concerto together.

Donato is just a great guy, and working with him is a ton of fun… Especially when we’re working over big root beer floats.

Root beer floats, celebrating the conclusion of the 2016 “American Roots” program, in which Albright performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and brought the house down with his Great Balls of Fire encore.

CS: Playing Gershwin last time, you were able to incorporate some improvisation, which is something what you’re particularly known for. This time you’ll be performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3. How does that compare?

Last time when we performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, we were able to take a ton of liberties and incorporate jazzy influences throughout the piece. In the Beethoven, we will be able to do the same… but in a much different way. From the dialogue between the orchestra and the piano to the intense emotions that Beethoven aimed to incorporate, there is a lot of room for putting your own “stamp” on things. One thing I enjoy doing (especially in this piece) is to completely improvise a large cadenza (which was actually pretty commonplace long ago). The neat thing is that I never know how it’ll come out until the concert!

CS: What is something people might be surprised to learn about you?

CA: People sometimes ask what I listen to in the car, fully expecting me to say “Beethoven” or “Chopin” or whatever. Nope! Korean Pop and American Pop music is usually what’s on while I’m cruising down the road. I like to think that I listened to K-pop before it became “cool.” 🙂

CS: We’ve seen the news reports from when you were a toddler, seemingly improvising songs you had heard your mom playing. When did you start playing and when did you realize you wanted to do this for a career?

This is a long one! Long story short, when I was 3 years old, I climbed up on a clunky, junky old upright we had in the house that my parents had gotten at a garage sale. I started picking out “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” by ear, so my mom came in and asked me who had taught me that. I said that no one had, so she noticed I had a knack for the piano, and started me on lessons with several teachers who taught me exclusively by ear.

When I was about 7, a teacher I had told my parents I should have a year of classical training to develop technique (and then I could return to the “fun songs,” which included Great Balls of Fire and the Backstreet Boys!), and referred me to Nancy Adsit. I ended up working with her until leaving for college.

I knew I loved piano, but I also knew that my family wouldn’t be able to support me financially if music didn’t work out. So, joint programs where I could do both music and something else sounded like a great idea. I decided to do the Harvard College/New England Conservatory of Music 5-Year AB/MM Joint Program, where I did Pre-Med and majored in Economics at Harvard, while doing my Masters of Music at NEC. During college, I began performing and touring more and more (I’d often spend each weekend in hotels somewhere emailing in homework, and weekdays on campus going to classes).

Near the end of the program, I knew I had to make a decision. I realized that business and medicine were strong interests of mine, but that music was a passion…and that there is a world of difference between something you’re interested in and something you’re passionate about. I then decided to pursue music and to go to Juilliard to do my post-grad Artist Diploma.

CS: Nothing ever goes as planned. What’s the craziest thing that has ever happened to you during a performance?

Oh, man… there are too many to name! Once, I was performing with an orchestra on the east coast in July (where “hot” and “humid” are huge understatements). The day of the concert, the air conditioning in the concert hall died for the first time ever. Luckily, the musicians in the orchestra agreed to proceed with the concert, so the show could still go on and not have to be cancelled. We were all melting on the stage, though (and the audience was in the hall, too, despite the paper fans that were passed out). Midway through the concert, in the middle of the piece, I swung off my tuxedo jacket onto the floor. It turned out to be an awesome performance… and a memorable one!

The California Symphony’s season opener BEETHOVEN & BERNSTEIN takes place on Sunday, September 23 at 4 PM at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.

Visit www.californiasymphony.org for tickets and more information.

Beethoven & Bernstein Program Notes

An American icon’s best loved works and a returning virtuoso feature in the California Symphony’s 2018–19 season opener—Sunday, September 23, at 4pm, at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek. Read Scott Foglesong’s program notes here.



PROGRAM: BEETHOVEN & BERNSTEIN

Sunday, September 23, at 4pm, at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek

Overture to Candide (1956) — by Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990)

Piano Concerto №3 in C Minor, Op. 37 (1803) — by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)

Three Latin-American Dances for Orchestra (2003) — by Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972)

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1961) — by Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990): Overture to Candide (1956)

Chic celebrity he may have been, bellwether of contemporary American life, his patrician features and cultivated New England voice familiar to millions from his many appearances on radio and television. And yet Leonard Bernstein was something of a throwback to an earlier age when to be a musician meant to encompass the whole of the art rather than to segregate oneself into a well-defined specialty. Like those multitudinous kapellmeisters who peppered Europe from the 17th through 19th centuries, Bernstein could do everything. And he could do it all well: composer, conductor, pianist, teacher, writer.

But he didn’t always succeed. Consider his 1956 Broadway “comic operetta” Candide: It bombed, despite having a libretto by no less than Lillian Hellman, despite being directed by no less than Tyrone Guthrie, and despite starring no less than Robert Rounseville and Barbara Cook. Rather than allow his Voltaire-based brainchild to slink away to the Bardo of failed shows, Bernstein kept on revising and rewriting, starting with the 1959 London production and continuing on for decades with an assortment of collaborators. Nor did it all end with Bernstein’s death in 1990. As of 2018 Candide sports as many upgrades as Microsoft Windows.

The Overture has persisted through it all as a popular concert staple. Vivacious, witty, and ever so manic, it whizzes by in a whirlwind of orchestral pyrotechnics. Along the way it serves up a number of tunes from the show, including Glitter and Be Gay — that canary-on-steroids throat-scorcher that some listeners might remember as the theme music for Dick Cavett’s various TV shows.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827): Piano Concerto №3 in C Minor, Op. 37

“String Snapper, Hands on High” was critic Harold C. Schonberg’s title for the Beethoven chapter in The Great Pianists. The description is apt. Easily the most electrifying pianist of his generation, spellbinder of audiences and scourge of piano tuners, Beethoven brought something altogether new to the yet-green art of piano playing: pure animal magnetism. As he aged and his hearing deteriorated along with his overall health, wrong notes began to crowd out the right ones, but his laser-like intensity never faltered.

Piano Concerto №3 in C Minor dates from the beginning of Beethoven’s “Middle Period,” a.k.a. his full artistic maturity, when his output began to resemble a fusillade of musical thunderbolts emanating from the right hand of an over-stimulated Zeus. Music would never be the same after that decade-long bombardment; in fact, one could characterize the ensuing 19th century as a collective attempt to come to grips with, and mop up after, Beethoven’s volcanic Middle Period.

Even if the Third Concerto is putatively in the darkly dramatic key of C Minor, its first movement is quite the journey through a mélange of keys, moods, and affects. Almost right up to the end Beethoven manages to sidestep an easy resolution until absolute necessity dictates a proper wrap-up.

The second-place Adagio, one of the noblest movements in Beethoven’s concertos, could stand alone as an independent work of the Rhapsody variety. Just how far the piano had evolved in the mere ten years since Mozart’s last piano concerto is demonstrated by the middle section, in which a silvery haze from the piano accompanies and supports statements from the winds. Soon enough (too soon, it often seems) the final measures are reached, and in a sudden lurch the masterful third-place Rondo is propelled into action by the solo piano.

Beethoven’s finale has served as the inspiration and model for any number of later composers. Its square-jawed main theme turns out to be the inexhaustible source of the materials that follow, as Beethoven adroitly leaps over every pitfall of a form prone to stupefying tedium due to its periodic repeats. To conclude, Beethoven transforms that originally stern theme into the stuff for a dazzling celebratory frolic.

Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972): Three Latin-American Dances for Orchestra (2003)

“Perhaps there are other disciplines that I could have aimed my life at — I seriously considered political science and law — and who knows where those roads would have led? But my sense of self has developed inexorably along the simple principle of storytelling and creating objects of beauty through sound, leaving the earth hopefully a bit better.”

Thus wrote Gabriela Lena Frank, a notably successful practitioner of a profession not particularly noted for successes. Her influences and inspirations reach far beyond her native Berkeley, including Latin America (Peru in particular), Asia, and Eastern Europe. Frank tells us that the first of her Three Latin-American Dances for Orchestra of 2003 opens as an “unabashed tribute to the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein.” The second-place Highland Harawi evokes the mountainous mysteries of the Andean world, while the concluding Mestizo Waltz lightens the mood by celebrating the kaleidoscopic mestizo music of the South American Pacific coast.

Leonard Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1961)

Bernstein’s theatrical masterpiece West Side Story, with lyrics by a then-unknown Stephen Sondheim and book by Arthur Laurents, opened to solid, if not overwhelming, success at New York’s Winter Garden Theater on September 26, 1957. A dramatic departure from Broadway norms in its threading of Jerome Robbins’s deeply integrated dance routines throughout an urban update of Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story constitutes a sophisticated hybrid of musical and ballet, the whole empowered by Bernstein’s magnificent, and now iconic, score.

In 1961, four years after the Broadway premiere, Bernstein assembled an orchestral suite that follows the show’s plot mostly via its dance routines, including songs such as “Somewhere,” later fused with “I Have a Love” in the tragic Finale. A point of particular interest: Bernstein’s skillful variants of the ecstatic love song “Maria” in both the “Cha-Cha” and the “Meeting Scene” as Tony and Maria discover each other, followed by an up-tempo variation of the same melodic figure as the nervous Jets dance the “Cool” fugue immediately before their climactic rumble with the Sharks.

Program Annotator Scott Foglesong is the Chair of Musicianship and Music Theory at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and a Contributing Writer and Lecturer for the San Francisco Symphony.

The California Symphony’s season opener BEETHOVEN & BERNSTEIN takes place on Sunday, September 23 at 4 PM at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.

Visit www.californiasymphony.org for tickets and more information.

Something Old, Something New— Something Different

The 2017–18 season finale features two European masterpieces (“Something Old”), a world premiere (“Something New”), and a program with a difference


At first glance, the line up for the California Symphony’s May 6 season closer —SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW—may look like business as usual. However delve deeper, and there is more to the finale than might initially meet the eye.

Balch — like a broken clock (World Premiere)

Sibelius — Symphony №3

Brahms — Piano Concerto №2, with Haochen Zhang, piano

1. A World Premiere

First on the program is the debut performance of like a broken clock, written by Young American Composer in Residence Katherine Balch (2017–2020). By definition, a world premiere is new and therefore pretty special, so we won’t labor the point. (You can read more about Balch and her fascinating approach to composing here.)

2. A Symphony That’s Short

Next up is Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ Symphony №3.

Pro-fans will notice that this is a break with the common pattern of classical music concert programming, which usually places the symphonic work at the end, after intermission. For this program, the running order is flipped, with the symphony before the break and the piano concerto at the end.

The reason for the flip is the relative length of the pieces: For a symphony, Sibelius’ Symphony №3 is a comparatively brief piece, clocking in at 31 minutes. It even comprises one fewer movement than the usual four you might expect from a symphonic work. This is the result of Sibelius choosing to move away from the Romantic style of his previous two symphonies — long, expansive works, influenced by the likes of Tchaikovsky — to explore a more focused, compressed style, characteristic of later composers.

3. A Concerto That’s Like a Symphony

After intermission and standing in contrast to the economy of the Sibelius symphony comes the mighty Brahms’ Piano Concerto №2. Delivered 22 years after his first, which was initially savaged by critics, Brahms’ second piano concerto is a grand and sweeping piece in the tradition of Romantic composers, with moments of drama and tenderness and culminating in thrilling finale. Brahms jokingly described it to a friend as a “tiny, tiny piano concerto,” but in fact, it’s a monumental piece that is often described as a “symphony with piano.”

Most concertos have a straightforward, “fast-slow-fast” three-movement structure, but Brahms added an extra fast second movement (the scherzo), so it’s a real workout for conductor, orchestra and soloist alike. For the soloist, it is also fiendishly difficult to play.

Taking on the challenge is acclaimed piano virtuoso Haochen Zhang, who won the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition at age 19. (Read more about this unique talent here.) Zhang first learned the piece at 15 and he performs it for only the second time in his career at the season finale.

“Brahms has always been one of my favorite composers, and this concerto certainly has given me an overwhelming joy everytime I listened or played it. It’s a perfect embodiment of this combination of grandness and intimacy and is perhaps why it’s so enduringly charming yet so challenging to interpret.” — Soloist Haochen Zhang on Brahms Piano Concerto №2.

4. A Special Reunion

Haochen Zhang and then Music Director candidate Donato Cabrera in 2013.

Guest artist Haochen Zhang last played with us five years ago when Donato Cabrera was a guest conductor, auditioning for the role of Music Director for the California Symphony. (Zhang played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto №4 — read more about that performance here.) The concert wowed critics, audiences, and the selection committee, and led to Cabrera’s appointment to the role he has held for the past five seasons.

Zhang says, “I recall lots of fond memories from the last time I was there. The Orchestra was really devoted and enthusiastic throughout the rehearsals, and Maestro Cabrera was not only a great conductor but such a supportive collaborator to a young musician like me.”

Cabrera chimes in: “I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to bring back Haochen since we first worked together in 2013 on Beethoven’s Piano Concerto №4. I could tell through his approach to the Beethoven that he’d bring the same wonderful singing qualities to the Brahms Piano Concerto №2.”

The California Symphony’s 2017–18 season finale concert SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW takes place Sunday, May 6 at 4PM in Walnut Creek at the Lesher Center for the Arts.

For tickets and information, visit californiasymphony.org

Haochen Zhang: Veteran Pianist at Age 27

Season finale guest artist Zhang first wowed audiences at the age of 5

Then and now: At left, Zhang plays for family in preparation for his first professional gig, just shy of his 5th birthday. Right: Haochen Zhang now.

In demand internationally for nearly a decade now, Haochen Zhang first rose to prominence with his 2009 win at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition at just 19. However, his musical journey began much, much earlier: As a kindergartner, while friends were playing in the sandbox, Zhang was playing Mozart to great acclaim in his native China.

The Early Years

When Zhang was introduced to the piano a few months before his 4th birthday, he says it looked like a big toy to him, and when his mom asked if he’d like to learn to play, he embraced the opportunity. He says his mom “felt like I learned the piano faster than other children at the same age.”

At age 5, he dazzled a Shanghai Concert Hall audience with his interpretations of music by Bach, Mozart, and Haydn. By 6, he had debuted with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. When he was 11, Zhang toured major cities across China performing Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin.

Success and accolades continued and in 2002, at 12 years of age, Zhang became the youngest winner in the history of the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians.

Coming to America

2005 marked a turning point as Zhang came to the US to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia under Gary Graffman, who also taught major stars like Lang Lang and Yuja Wang. It was a challenging time for the young prodigy, especially after mom’s visa expired and she had to return home to China, leaving fifteen-year-old Zhang to make his way on his own in a foreign country and with limited English language skills.

Zhang with his mother around the time he relocated to the US to study music.

“I had learned to speak English before I came to the States, but only to the degree of simple conversation and very basic reading. Of course, I had to suffer quite a bit in my first school year in the States. But that was nothing compared to a much bigger challenge: the culture shock of an utterly different environment, and the loneliness of living by myself for the first time.”—Haochen Zhang remembering his move to the U.S. at 15.

Zhang’s Big Break

Zhang garnered international attention in 2009 when he won gold at the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition—arguably the highest-profile piano competition in the world, which is held every four years in Fort Worth, TX. At 19, Zhang became the second youngest ever winner of the gold medal and the first from an Asian country.

Life After Gold

After winning the $20,000 cash prize, a recording contract, and a raft of international concert tour dates, Zhang embarked on a three-year tour across the United States, Americas, Asia and Europe, playing an astonishing 200 concerts at top venues across the globe. In 2017, he won the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, awarded to only 5 outstanding musicians each year. He also released his first studio album CD the same year.

Now 27 years old, Haochen Zhang performs the immense and challenging Brahms Piano Concerto №2 in the California Symphony season finale concert SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW under Music Director Donato Cabrera at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek on Sunday May 6 at 4PM.

“Brahms has always been one of my favorite composers, and this concerto certainly has given me an overwhelming joy everytime I listened or played it. It’s a perfect embodiment of this combination of grandness and intimacy and is perhaps why it’s so enduringly charming yet so challenging to interpret.” — Haochen Zhang on Brahms Piano Concerto №2.

For information and tickets, visit www.californiasymphony.org.

Composer-in-Residence Katherine Balch on Cuckoo Clocks, California, and Composing in Color

The California Symphony’s May 6 season finale includes the world premiere of Balch’s “like a broken clock”

California Symphony Young American Composer-in-Residence (2017–2020). Photo credit KatieL Photography.

We caught up with Composer-in-Residence Katherine Balch to learn more about like a broken clock, the first of three pieces she will deliver during her three-year residency with the California Symphony. Balch beat out 130 other applicants in a newly revamped, “blind” selection process to win the highly-regarded, highly competitive residency, and she is the first woman composer to take up the position in the program’s 26 year history.

The title of the piece receiving its world premiere in Walnut Creek on May 6 is inspired by a line in a song called “In California,” by singer-songwriter Joanna Newsom:

Sometimes I am so in love with you

(Like a little clock

That trembles on the edge of the hour

Only ever calling out “Cuckoo, cuckoo”)

— From “In California” by Joanna Newsom

CSO: Why is the title like a broken clock all in lower case?

KB: The title is in lower case in reference to the Joanna Newsom lyric and also because to me it signals that this piece is part of a larger whole that deals with the musical ideas I’m interested in right now, which often cross pollinate my music.

CSO: Your composition process involves a lot of drawing and sketching. As simply as possible(!), can you explain what this graphic is and how it relates to the piece?

Balch describes her sketching as “a sort of pre-compositional drawing of the formal structural and sonic palette of the piece.”

KB: Usually, my process for writing a piece begins with a lot of generating / sketching out musical ideas, and then at a certain point I try to imagine the piece as a whole in my head.

This drawing is a representation of the whole piece, and guides me as I through-compose the material. I think very visually, so representing sounds with colors and shapes helps me remember them as I begin the process of “transcribing” the sounds in my imagination to the page.

CSO: You flew out from New York for your first rehearsal reading with the California Symphony in January. Did you make any adjustments to the score as a result? What did you learn from the experience?

KB: Yes, I made a ton of changes! I was so surprised how helpful and informative a half-hour of reading could be. Listening back to the recording helped me make a million tiny adjustments to the score (dynamics, balance, doublings, simplifying) and also some larger ones (I changed the end and added about a minute of music). It also helped me add in orchestration details and filter out extraneous ones.

I am so grateful to the orchestra for helping me make this a better piece! I am a compulsive revisor, and it’s such an unusual experience to get the chance to make revisions before a premier performance like that.

“Katie’s approach to composition is full of inventiveness and whimsy. I think our audience will not only hear the implications that the title of the piece implies, but will also be surprised by how she goes about creating these sounds.” — Music Director Donato Cabrera

Balch’s piece—the “something new” in a season finale concert entitled Something Old, Something New — receives its premiere on Sunday, May 6. The “somethings old” on the program are supplied by Sibelius’ Symphony №3 and Brahms’ Piano Concerto №2, played by piano virtuoso Haochen Zhang.

For more information, please visit californiasymphony.org.

Piano Sensation Haochen Zhang Returns after a Pivotal Debut

Haochen Zhang reunites with Music Director Donato Cabrera five years after their first “glittering” collaboration

Haochen Zhang and then Music Director candidate Donato Cabrera in 2013.

For internationally acclaimed, award-winning pianist Haochen Zhang, the California Symphony’s 2017–18 season finale concert SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW marks Zhang’s second time performing with the orchestra—five years after his 2013 debut and a concert which holds special significance in the 31-year history of the organization.

In the three seasons after founding Music Director Barry Jekowski’s departure from the California Symphony in 2010, audiences in Walnut Creek welcomed a total of 12 guest conductors to the podium as the organization searched for a successor. Towards the end of that search, for what would be his final chance to impress, then Music Director candidate Donato Cabrera led the orchestra in a program he devised which featured music by Adams, Prokofiev, and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto №4.

The guest artist he selected to feature on that program was 22-year-old piano sensation Haochen Zhang — one of the youngest ever winners of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and already an established soloist who was in-demand internationally.

On his winning performance at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, The Dallas Morning News observed that Haochen Zhang “demonstrated a musical maturity almost unimaginable in one so young… he impressed with depth of musical understanding and subtle expressive nuance.”

It proved a wise choice.

In a review of the March 2013 concert, the Mercury News declared: “The afternoon’s centerpiece was a glittering performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto №4, with pianist Haochen Zhang as soloist. Cabrera shaped this radiant score with elegance and precision, and Zhang… was a strong, stylish partner.”

The review continues: “Zhang, a 22-year-old native of China, resists the swooning excess that besets many of his contemporaries in performances of Beethoven’s music. In the concerto’s first movement, his playing was assured and briskly emphatic; the finale came across with arresting, clear-eyed vigor.”

And as for Cabrera?

The Mercury News’ review headline says it all: “Guest conductor Cabrera, California Symphony make a perfect match in concert.” The piece continued: “Cabrera, conducting with impressive energy and meticulous focus, drew vibrant, dynamic playing from the ensemble.” Clearly, it was enough to persuade the selection committee and soon after the concert, Cabrera was appointed California Symphony’s second ever Music Director, a position he has held for 5 years and counting.

“I recall lots of fond memories from the last time I was there. The orchestra was really devoted and enthusiastic throughout the rehearsals, and Maestro Cabrera was not only a great conductor but such a supportive collaborator to a young musician like me.”—Haochen Zhang on his 2013 California Symphony debut.

On Zhang’s return, Cabrera comments: “I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to bring back Haochen since we first worked together in 2013 on Beethoven’s Piano Concerto №4. I could tell through his approach to the Beethoven that he’d bring the same wonderful singing qualities to the Brahms Piano Concerto №2.”

Zhang agrees: “One could argue that Beethoven 4 and Brahms 2 share a certain kind of likeness, in the sense that both are large-scale works full of Germanic spirit yet intimate reflections, which makes me look forward even more to our collaboration this time.”

The California Symphony’s season finale concert SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW takes place on Sunday, May 6 at 4 PM at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.

Visit www.californiasymphony.org for tickets and more information.

Announcing the 2018–19 Season

Featuring Bruckner, Beethoven, Bernstein, and more…


The 2018–19 Season is here, and highlights include:

  • Bernstein — A centennial celebration of the American icon
  • Beethoven — With award-winning pianist and audience favorite Charlie Albright
  • Movie Magic — Animated classic The Snowman with score performed live with the Pacific Boychoir, plus a program that showcases the genius of American composer John Williams
  • Piazzolla — Concertmaster Jennifer Cho leads the orchestra in a seductive Argentine tango
  • Bruckner, Mozart, Ravel, and more, including the world premiere of a new violin concerto by Young American Composer-in-Residence Katherine Balch

Season tickets are now available. In addition to the best prices we offer all year, subscribers enjoy 20% off extra single tickets all season long, early purchasing privileges, and free ticket exchanges. Explore the new season, and find out more about subscribing here.

Want to know more about this year’s programming choices and the California Symphony’s commitment to diversity? Read more in the press release:

https://mailchi.mp/californiasymphony.org/for-immediate-release-2018-19-season

For more information, visit www.californiasymphony.org/2018–19season or call 925.280.2490.

Mozart Interrupted

What additional treasures might exist had Mozart survived beyond 35? And what iconic works *wouldn’t* we have, if other great composers had died young like him?


“When I am… completely myself, entirely alone… or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these ideas come I know not nor can I force them.” —Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

If Mozart is to be taken at his word, he must have lived much of his short life in sleepless but productive solitude. He composed over 600 musical works—including 21 stage and opera works, 15 masses, and over 50 symphonies—and he did all this in just half a lifetime.

As much wonderful music as Mozart left us, it is tantalizing to wonder what else he might have gone on to write, had he had a few more years. When Mozart died in 1791 at the age of 35 while writing his Requiem Mass, he was at the peak of his powers: He had finished two operas (including the much-loved Magic Flute), a clarinet concerto, a cantata and had about two-thirds of the Requiem completed.

What if he’d had another 30 years ahead of him? How many more operas, concerti and great symphonic works would he have delivered? How much further would he have advanced the forms?

Of course, we’ll never know the answer, but this started us thinking—possibly a little morbidly—about all the other great works that would not exist, had their composers also been struck down in their 30s. Consider, for example, that Bruckner did not even complete his first symphony until he was 43; Beethoven wrote symphonies five through nine all after the age of 35; and Brahms delivered his virtuosic second piano concerto at the comparatively ripe old age of 48.

Here is a short list of monumental works that would never have been written had their composers perished like Mozart at the age of 35.

  1. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

There would be no Ode to Joy since Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony at the age of 54.

2. The Nutcracker Suite

There would be no sugar plum fairies dancing to music composed by Tchaikovsky at age 52.

3. The Messiah

The holidays just wouldn’t be the same without gems like For Unto Us a Child is Born and the Hallelujah Chorus, composed by Handel at age 56.

4. New World Symphony

Dvorak composed his Ninth Symphony, the New World, at the age of 52.

5. Wagner’s Ring Cycle

Not one single note of the stirring Ride of the Valkyries, composed as part of Wagner’s opera saga at the age of 61.

We’ll never really know what the world lost when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died at just 35, working on the Requiem that was to become his own unfinished swan song, but it is astonishing to consider his achievements in the context of other composers’ bodies of work which were delivered in up to twice the time.

Mozart’s genius and his singular place among the greats is undeniable. Rather than dwell on the loss, perhaps a better course of action is to reflect on and appreciate the many glorious treasures he left behind?

The California Symphony performs MOZART REQUIEM with the San Francisco Conservatory Chorus on March 17 at 8 PM and March 18 at 4 PM at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.

Visit www.californiasymphony.org for information.

5 Questions with our Mozart Requiem Soloists

An agricultural engineer, a budding neuroscientist, and ripped pants during a performance: We learned some of the inner secrets of the talented stars of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music who will be featured in our MOZART REQUIEM concerts this month.


Esther Tonea, soprano

Esther Tonea, soprano

1. Where are you from?

I usually say Buford, Georgia, but I was born in Hayward! Before starting my Masters at SFCM, I lived with my family in Georgia for 12 years.

2. Something people might be surprised to learn about you?

In the transition from high school to college, I was planning to study neuroscience and have music as my “side gig.” In high school I did a two year internship at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta studying the effects of the hippocampus on relational memory, and I was so fascinated by all of this research that I was certain I wanted to pursue a career in neuroscience. Well… things change, Jo. The moment I realized I needed to choose music was my freshman year when I was playing in the pit orchestra for Bizet’s Carmen. I was fighting tears just at the thought of a life without music, and that’s how I knew what I needed to do.

3. What is your Plan B?

What is this “Plan B” you speak of? Asking for a friend…

4. Do you play any instruments?

I grew up in a very musical family. My dad studied music (upright bass and piano) in Romania while growing up, and my mom took my sisters and I to zillions of private lessons and performances throughout the years. I tried bass, flute, and french horn until I fell in love with the cello. Now I have two Bachelors degrees in performance: one for cello and one for voice!

5. How has music changed your life?

Music has changed my life in more ways than I can count. When I first started playing in orchestra in middle school I began to learn how to work in groups, listening to each person’s musical contributions and ideas. Music taught me discipline, showed me inspiration, helped me explore passion… The list is endless and each individual component continues its refinement daily. I don’t know who I would be without music (and I’m not sure I even want to think about it)!

Kaitlin Bertschi, mezzo-soprano

Kaitlin Bertschi, mezzo-soprano

1. Where are you from?

I’m originally from Long Island, New York but spent time living in New Orleans as well.

2. Favorite performance outfit?

Either my senior recital dress which I picked specifically because I was performing the Habanera from Carmen (lots of ruffles and flair!) or the beautiful Geisha costume I wore when I performed in Madama Butterfly with New Orleans Opera.

3. How has music changed your life?

Music, primarily singing, may be the most influential element of my life. It’s become all-consuming in the best way. Learning a role, or singing a text has served me as an avenue for processing my feelings. It’s been my vehicle for connecting and sharing with the people in my life. It’s taught me discipline, patience, and humility in a profound way like no other forces in my life. The text to Schubert’s An die Musik comes to mind when trying to sum up how music has changed and shaped me.

4. Nothing ever goes as planned — What’s the craziest thing that has ever happened during a performance?

This is so true. The first thing that comes to mind is a performance of the Verdi Requiem I sang in when I was pursuing my undergraduate degree. It was a collaboration with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and I just remember that music being so, so very powerful. During the performance, in the middle of the Dies Irae, the chorus, soloists, orchestra, and maestro were all shocked when the head of the bass drum exploded on stage after those major drum hits Verdi composed for the part. They had to replace the instrument with another, but I think the percussionist was able to flip it over and keep playing to finish the movement. The performance, of course, went on and I’m not sure the audience even noticed.

5. What is your Plan B?

I always thought it would be really nice to be a florist. Flowers are so pretty. People are always sending them to show a little love. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to be a part of? But I think I’ll stick to Plan A.

Jimmy Kansau, tenor

Jimmy Kansau, tenor

1. Where are you from?

I’m from the Andes of Venezuela. But I should consider myself a San Franciscan since I’ve been here for 23 years. To some that’s a lifetime.

2. What is your Plan B?

I’m realizing it as we speak. A while back I was studying to be an agricultural engineer. Two classes left to graduate I said: I’m done.

3. How has music changed your life?

Music has allowed me to visit other countries and meet people. Music has opened a way to inspire others through mentoring. Music has allowed me to fulfill my dreams of working in some of the best venues in the world. But most importantly the friendships that have developed from it all.

4. Do you play any instruments?

I play the guitar to accompany myself or my siblings. I also play the Cuatro which is the big sister of the Ukulele brought by the Portuguese to South America.

5. Something people might be surprised to learn about you?

I am the Studio Director and partner of an interior design firm JKA Design of San Francisco. I also used to paint landscapes and do architectural renderings back in the 80’s and 90’s. I love the mid-century sensitivity in architecture, design and music.

Brandon Bell, baritone

Brandon Bell, baritone

1. Where are you from?

I am from Suffolk, Virginia — the proud “Peanut Capital of the World!”

2. What is your Plan B?

When I was a junior in high school, I remember pressing one of the Young Artists at a local opera company for advice, particularly about going to college and studying voice. He left me with an incredible message that has stuck with me ever since. To paraphrase, he said, “If you want to succeed in this business, you have to give it everything you’ve got; all of you, with little-to-no doubt. You just go for it!” For me, that meant working 100% at my craft without carrying the uncertainties and potential instabilities of the career with me. So to answer your question, there is no Plan B, just complete dedication for now.

3. When did you start singing and when did you realize you wanted to do this for a living?

I’ve honestly been singing my entire life, and I barely remember a time when I wasn’t holding a microphone and forcing my family to endure one-man, living room, talent shows. In one of my second-grade projects, I stated that when I grew up, I wanted to be “either a singer or an astronaut.” Astronaut was essentially the go-to choice for boys back then, and my second choice career continued to evolve as I grew older. But throughout adolescence, high school, and the beginning of my young adult years, my number one want has always been to be a singer. I started taking voice lessons and singing opera in ninth grade, and for the first time in my life, my voice really felt at home. I pretty much made a commitment to it then.

4. Any musically talented relatives?

My dad is an INCREDIBLE singer and probably is the source of most of my musical gifts and love for performing. He spent part of his time as a soldier in the US Army touring and singing in a group that covered almost every genre of music imaginable. (Also: You didn’t hear this from me, but he does a killer Louis Armstrong).

5. What’s the craziest thing that has ever happened during a performance?

As a high schooler, I had the unique opportunity to be in the chorus of a couple of productions with Virginia Opera. I was lucky enough to be in the chorus of their 2009 production of Daughter of the Regiment. In our opening scene, was staged to drop down on one knee directly downstage center. So, we’re in performance, and I do my thing — I get down and I hear a loud *riiiiiiip*. I look down and find that I have completely ripped the inseam of my pants. Unfortunately for me, right after that moment we had a large group dance number, complete with kicks, which I had to meticulously navigate without exposing my ripped pants to the packed audience. Since then, ripped pants have kinda become my thing!

The California Symphony performs MOZART REQUIEM with the San Francisco Conservatory Chorus on March 17 at 8 PM and March 18 at 4 PM at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.

Visit www.californiasymphony.org for information.

Meet Guest Artist Alexi Kenney

Violin virtuoso Alexi Kenney, comes home to the Bay Area to debut with the California Symphony, January 20 & 21, 2018, at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.

Alexi Kenney on Bruch’s Violin Concerto №1:

“It’s is one of my personal favorites and also really a staple of our repertoire. It has everything that you’d want for in a violin concerto. It has these incredible, sweeping melodies and gorgeous singing lines that go from the top of the instrument to the bottom. And on top of that, it’s just a thrilling virtuosic ride for everyone.”

Alexi Kenney performs Bruch Violin Concerto №1 with Donato Cabrera and the California Symphony in PASTORAL BEETHOVEN, Saturday, January 20 at 8pm & Sunday, January 21 at 4pm at the Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek.

For more information, visit californiasymphony.org.