September 4, 2024
In our 2024/25 season opener, four internationally acclaimed singers with Bay Area connections – Laquita Mitchell, soprano; Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano; Nicholas Phan, tenor; and Sidney Outlaw, baritone – join the California Symphony and the 100-member strong San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) Chorus for a powerful performance of BEETHOVEN’S NINTH. We asked our four soloists…
August 7, 2024
Louise Farrenc (1804–1875) Overture No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 24 (1834) Isabelle Vengerova. Rosina Lhevinne. Adele Marcus. Yvonne Loriod. All major-league piano teachers at major-league conservatories, and all women. They shared an unheralded predecessor in 19th century composer and pianist Louise Farrenc, mainstay piano faculty at the Paris Conservatoire for decades. She concertized in…
September 9, 2021
Marianna Martines (1744–1812) Sinfonia (Overture) in C Major (1770) The name Marianna Martines might not be familiar to modern music lovers, but the names of those in her circle most likely are: composers Joseph Haydn, Johann Adolph Hasse, and Giuseppe Bonno, Vienna court poet Metastasio, English critic and musical gadly Charles Burney, Empress Maria Theresa…
September 9, 2021
Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto is one of the best known and best loved pieces of music ever written, but it wasn’t always known as the “Emperor” and Beethoven might have had some choice words about its nickname. What’s in a name? Beethoven did not give his fifth piano concerto the nickname “Emperor” and he…
August 28, 2020
If he’d been allowed to sit down while practicing the violin as a child, Adam Golka may never have pursued his career as a pianist. Adam Golka tells us about his Texan-Polish roots, meditation, and that time he helped to avert disaster at a friend’s concert. Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are…
August 15, 2019
By California Symphony Music Director Donato Cabrera. As we approach the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in 2020, I thought we could get a head start by programming his most popular symphony, and perhaps the most recognizable piece of Western Classical Music, his Symphony №5, with one of his lesser known works, The Creatures…
August 15, 2019
Ludwig van Beethoven – Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus (1801) We tend not to think of Beethoven as a theatrical composer. We think symphonies, we think sonatas, we think string quartets and piano trios and concertos. After all, he wrote only one opera (Fidelio) plus a smattering of incidental music. And there’s a…
August 25, 2018
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…
August 16, 2018
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…
April 13, 2018
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…
