THE
BEACH CITIES SYMPHONY
BARRY
BRISK, MUSIC DIRECTOR
PRESENTS
ELMER
SU
VIOLIN
SOLOIST
in
a performance of
FRIDAY,
MARCH 14, 2003
Marsee
Auditorium, El Camino College
Crenshaw
Blvd. at Redondo Beach Blvd.
FREE
ADMISSION & FREE PARKING
Concert
time: 8:15 p.m.
Pre-concert
lecture: 7:30 p.m.
Information:
(310) 379-9725 or (310) 539-4649
Also
featuring:
Mother
Goose Suite by Maurice Ravel: Cynthia Tong, narrator
Suite
from The Golden Cockerel by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
We
are honored to have as our soloist on March 14 the internationally renowned
concert violinist ELMER SU, whose name is familiar to Beach Cities
Symphony audiences through his students’ performances in our Artists of
the Future concerts, most recently Hannah Kahng in May of 2002. Mr. Su,
who was born in Fujian province, attended Shanghai Conservatory and upon
graduation became concertmaster of the Fujian Symphony. During this time
he also starred on radio and television as well as in solo appearances
throughout China. In 1987 Mr. Su came to the United States to further his
violin studies, first at the University of San Diego and then at the University
of Southern California, where he studied with Alice Schoenfeld. For six
years he was a member of the Konzertrio under Edwin Deveny, who believes
Mr. Su to be “One of the foremost violinists in the world. His technique
has few peers, and his tone is rich and full. Mr. Su is a thoughtful musician
who considers the beauty of music to be most important, and he is passing
all this knowledge on to his grateful class of selected students.” Elmer
Su currently serves as concertmaster of the United Chinese Musicians Symphony
and the Livic Chamber Orchestra in Los Angeles. He recently returned from
a successful concert tour of China which included a performance of The
Butterfly Lovers with the Shanghai Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra.
CYNTHIA
TONG, the narrator of Maurice
Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite which opens our March 14 concert, is an 11-year-old
fifth grader at Vista Grande Elementary School in Rancho Palos Verdes.
Earlier in her academic career she attended Chadwick School, where she
served as a class representative on the student council. Cynthia studies
flute with Donna Clarke, who plays in the Beach Cities Symphony.
Cynthia’s
whole family is musical. Her mother is Anli Lin Tong, our piano soloist
in January 2000 and current Chair of the Music Teachers Association of
California Artists of the Future Concerto Competition. Her father, an ophthalmologist,
plays the violin, and her brother, nine-year-old Nicholas, plays cello.
Cynthia is also a self-described “serious ballet dancer” who recently starred
as Clara in the Nutcracker (the accompanying photo shows her in costume)
and is the founder of the Children’s Play Company, for which she has written
two vehicles. She informs us that her Company is “not currently in business,”
only temporarily we hope. Cynthia’s introductions will focus on the characters
and emotions that the composer wanted to emphasize in each of the five
movements of the Mother Goose Suite. While Ravel once said that he was
trying to express “the poetry of childhood” in this composition, music
critic Gerald Larner noted that “There is at least as much adult nostalgia
as childish joy in these five pieces and far more of Ravel than . . . the
tellers of the tales featured therein.”
The
Beach Cities Symphony’s concerts in March 2003 and 2004 are partially supported
by a grant from the Los Angeles County Arts Commission totaling $3,600.
The Commission, founded in 1947 to foster excellence, diversity, vitality,
and accessibility for the arts in L.A. County, plays a leadership role
in funding and nurturing the arts and in enhancing the administrative skills
of arts organizations. Thus, $800 of our grant will be used to purchase
software to enable us to keep membership and budget records with more efficiency
and accuracy.
The
funded concerts reflect the variety and cultural richness of the many communities
in Los Angeles County. The March 2003 program presents legends from other
cultures: The Butterfly Lovers represents China, and Ravel’s Mother Goose
Suite draws on French fairy tales from several different sources. Lastly,
Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel finds its source in Alexander Pushkin’s
nineteenth-century poem of the same name which was originally inspired
by two of Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra, an excellent example
of enrichment through cross-cultural borrowing. In March of 2004, the Symphony
will present music by George Gershwin, Edward MacDowell, and William Grant
Still. Gershwin’s Cuban Overture (1934) and Still’s Afro-American Symphony
(1931) both display the powerful influence of African music in American
Composition. MacDowell, an American musician trained in Europe who returned
to this country to compose and perform, is best known for evocative shorter
piano pieces and for the Second Piano Concerto which will round out our
program.
The
Beach Cities Symphony Association very much appreciates the support of
the Arts Commission and of Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke (Second
District) and Don Knabe (Fourth District) in helping us fulfill our mission
to bring fine classical music to the South Bay community free of charge.”
Before
each concert and during intermission, the lobby of Marsee Auditorium is
staffed by a number of volunteers. Board President Bob Peterson and his
wife, Ada Belle, who are largely responsible for the Symphony’s 53-year
existence, make sure everyone gets a special welcome. Other regulars include
Mary Ann Keating, Genevieve Kiser, Yong Reuter, Jo Ann Kamada, Ruth MacFarlane,
Jeanie & George Pelzman, and Anna & Geoff Watson. Pictured here
are the two youngest members of our lobby crew, Mika Shimoda (on the left)
and Lianna Kwan. Mika and Lianna are fifth graders at Montemalaga Elementary
School in Palos Verdes Estates, and both participate in the school’s music
program. Lianna is studying violin, and Mika plays string bass. Mika has
attended Beach Cities Symphony rehearsals in the past with her father,
clarinetist James Lee. We hope to recruit both girls for the orchestra’s
string section in the future. Right now they are doing an excellent job
of encouraging donations from our concert audiences.
Maurice
Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite (Ma mère l’Oye) was originally
written for two pianos and consists of five short movements, each based
on a story from 17th- and 18th-century French fairy tales.While
the tales end happily, they show that childhood can be filled with fears,
shadows, and heart-stopping dangers. In “Sleeping Beauty,” a young princess
falls under a spell and sleeps for a hundred years. She wakes upon the
kiss of a handsome prince but also to great loss: her parents have died,
the kingdom has passed to another ruling family, and she must begin a new
life. After she and the prince marry, the Queen Mother tries to murder
her daughter-in-law and grandchildren and is only thwarted after falling
into a cauldron of vipers and toads. “Tom Thumb” resembles the story of
Hansel and Gretel. There is not enough to eat at home, so the diminutive
Tom and his six larger brothers are abandoned in the woods to fend for
themselves. Again the tale turns out well through violence deflected as
Tom tricks a bloodthirsty ogre into slaughtering his own seven daughters
instead of the boys. “Beauty and the Beast” and “Laideronette” (“The Ugly
Little Girl”) describe trauma and rejection based on lack of physical comeliness.
The
Golden Cockerel by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov began its musical life
as an opera based on a poem by Alexander Pushkin. The story seethes with
retribution and revenge. Czar Dodon’s kingdom is beset by enemies on all
sides, so the ruler asks a magician for help and promises in return to
grant any request. The magician gives Dodon a golden weathercock that,
when mounted atop the palace, will function as a proto-Early Warning System.
Twice the cockerel alerts Dodon to danger; each time the Czar sends an
army headed by one of his sons in the designated direction. Both times
the enemies are held off, but neither army returns. When the cockerel raises
a third alarm, the Czar himself leads his troops to the scene of battle.
There he finds all the soldiers slain and the two sons lying outside a
beautiful silk tent, each holding a sword thrust into his brother’s heart.
Dodon’s loud grief is interrupted when out steps the ravishing Queen of
Shemakhan. Dodon is mesmerized, forgets his sons’ deaths, and spends a
week of pleasure in the tent. When he returns to the palace with his new
mistress, the magician claims his reward: he wants the queen. An enraged
Dodon strikes the magician a fatal blow with his scepter. The cockerel
then swoops down from its perch and pecks the Czar to death, and the queen
vanishes, never to be seen again. Pushkin’s ending is vaguely worded: fairy
tales, while untrue, can teach young people lessons. Let’s be specific:
Dodon begins by wanting what is good for the kingdom but ends by wanting
what is good for himself. The cruelty of the double fratricide, Dodon’s
skull-crushing murder of the magician, the bird fatally hammering the Czar
with its beak show again a world where violence is the norm and self-interest
is punished by ruthless justice.
The
Chinese folk legend of The Butterfly Lovers, composed as a violin
concerto by Ho Zhan Hao and Cheh Kang in 1959, is a Romeo and Juliet story
with an ending that turns tragedy into transcendence. This tale is at once
realistic and lyrical. Zhu Yingtai disguises herself as a boy so that she
can go to school in another city. There she meets and secretly falls in
love with Liang Shanbo, and the two become close friends. After she returns
home, Yingtai sends for Shanbo and reveals her secret, but in the meantime
her parents have arranged for her marriage to the son of a wealthy merchant.
Shanbo dies of a broken heart and is buried near the route of Yingtai’s
wedding procession. As the unhappy bride is passing by, suddenly a thunderbolt
cracks open her lover’s tomb and Yingtai jumps in. A second bolt of lightning
strikes--and two butterflies soar out of the grave. A miracle has united
and transfigured the lovers into these ephemeral yet eternal symbols of
beauty and freedom.
In
his introduction to Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Padraic Colum reminds us that
these stories originated when families rested by the fire after a long
day’s labor and listened to tales that projected their unspoken wishes
and fears. Although as adults we now read in isolation, through the medium
of music we can listen together and reflect on what such legends tell us
about the possibilities and extremes of life.
OUR
LAST CONCERT OF THE 2002-03 SEASON:
May
30, 2003
Charles
Fernandez: Cartoon Suite (world première)
Artists
of the Future soloists: to be announced
P.
I. Tchaikovsky: Romeo & Juliet
The
2003 Artists of the Future Concerto Competition takes place on Sunday,
February 2. This year’s winners will be announced in the program booklet
for our March 14 concert.
Congratulations
to C. N. Tsu and John Gonzales, who won CDs, and Dr. Robert Haag, who won
the floral arrangement at our January concert’s prize drawing for members.
The raffle in March will include CDs generously donated by our soloist,
Elmer Su, and dinner for two at a local restaurant.
Visit
our web page: http://BeachCitiesSymphony.org
To
take advantage of our free Beach Cities Symphony e-mail news service, including
reminders of upcoming concerts and other events, send a blank e-mail request
to beachcitiessymphony-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Send
any web page suggestions or additions to Dr. Peter Landecker: peter@beachcitiessymphony.org
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Beach
Cities Symphony Assn.
Post
Office Box 248
Redondo
Beach, CA 90277-0248
Information
line: 310-379-9725 or 310-539-4649
Text:
Toni Empringham
Graphics:
Ralph Dame
Editor/Advisor:
Margaret McWilliams