Music director Carl St.Clair conducted the semi-staged opera with the Pacific Chorale.
PUCCINI: Madame Butterfly
In the pre-concert lecture, KUSC's Alan Chapman said that this opera has the simplest plot. He even made a unit of measure for opera story complexity, called the "Butterfly". Madame Butterfly will be 1 Butterfly. I wonder how Wagner's opera score on the butterfly scale! :)
Music director Carl St. Clair conducted with violinist Augustin Hadelich, vocalist Angel Garcia, soprano Celena Shafer, clarinetist Joseph Morris, and the Pacific Chorale.
Bernstein: PRELUDE, FUGUE AND RIFFS
Bernstein: SERENADE (AFTER PLATO’S “SYMPOSIUM”)
Bernstein: CHICHESTER PSALMS
Bernstein: SELECTIONS FROM ARIAS AND BARCAROLLES
An apprentice of Leonard Bernstein's, Carl is very passionate about "Lenny" and his works. There is probably no person better fit for a centennial concert.
Music director Carl St.Clair conducted the symphony.
Rimsky-Korsakov: “SCHEHERAZADE”
Before playing it in full, Carl gave a little preview of the piece, with snippets from each movement. He also teased the audience with a partial Super Bowl score, "7". :)
Scheherazade is the main character in "The Arabian Nights", or "One Thousand and One Nights". The once-betrayed Sultan, as his revenge to all women, took a new wife every day and killed her at dawn. To stop this, Scheherazade volunteered to become his wife, and told a story every night, leaving the punch line open for the next day. She continues this for 1,001 nights, until the Sultan finally gives up on killing her.
Carl likened this to the Netflix model, which lures the viewers into continuing to watch the next episode. :)
Guest conductor David Danzmayr conducted with pianist Gabriela Martinez.
MUSSORGSKY: Night on Bald Mountain
CHOPIN: Piano Concerto No. 1
PROKOFIEV: Symphony No. 7
KUSC's Alan Chapman interviewed both guests in the pre-concert lecture.
Gabriela started piano at age 5, saying she wanted to play the Beethoven's 2nd piano concerto, and she did so next year. She once performed at a recital at Antlers, Oklahoma (where there were only 3 stores on main street), and the hall's piano were missing the highest octave! Gabriela ended up playing a Liszt piece with a lot of clunking, I presume.
David is an Austrian conductor, and said the most difficult people to work with are Austrians! :)
Because they are very emotional, and that multiplies with them being musicians. He went on describing the traits of orchestras around the world. David also talked about his experience as a student of the Mozarteum University Salzburg. He said you shouldn't judge a person by what school they went to, but by with which teacher they studied from.
