BEACH CITIES SYMPHONY NEWSLETTER

Vol. XII, No. 3  -  March 2005

 

 

NEXT BEACH CITIES SYMPHONY CONCERT

 

SEBASTIEN KOCH: BEACH CITIES SYMPHONY SOLOIST ON MARCH 25:

 

            Praised by Marc Swed of the Los Angeles Times as a “Fine pianist with great immediacy,” Sebastien Koch has been hailed as one of the most promising pianists of his generation. Since his debut with Tchaikowsky's First Piano Concerto at Berlin Philharmonic Hall, Mr. Koch has given recitals at some of the world's most famous concert halls, including the Concertgebow and Beurs Van Berlage in Amsterdam, the Beethoven Saal in Germany, the Arsenal and the Salle Cortot in France, the Seoul Recital Hall in Korea, and the Crystal Cathedral in Los Angeles.

            As a soloist, Mr. Koch has appeared twice with the Orchestre National de Lorraine in France, the Orchestre du Luxembourg, and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.  He has performed several times at the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, the Sarasota Music Festival, the Holland Music Festival, and many others.  He was invited to perform on the USC Master Artists Series and has appeared frequently on the live radio-broadcast series “Sundays Live at the LACMA” as a performer as well as a composer. In recent seasons, Mr. Koch has concertized in over thirty cities throughout the United States, giving highly praised performances in the Community Concerts Series. He has been featured on many nationally televised broadcasts including France 3, RTL Television, and the BBC. He has recorded for Radio France, Sender Freies Berlin, Radio Klassik Amsterdam, Suedwestfunk, and both KUSC and KMZT in Los Angeles. An outstanding chamber musician, Mr. Koch has collaborated in diverse chamber music formations with world-renowned artists. His recordings of chamber music works by Saint-Saens, Grieg and Janacek are available on http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/beachcitiessymph (click on this link and the BCS gets 5% of your purchases).

            Mr. Koch was a pupil of Mireille Krier and Jean Micault at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris;Vitaly Margulis, Michel Beroff, and Vitaly Berzon at the Freiburg Musikhochschule; and Klaus Hellwig at the Berlin Academy of Arts. He was the only recipient of the prestigious French Lavoisier Scholarship in piano performance in 1997. Mr. Koch holds three “Premiers Prix” and a “Premier Prix Superieur Interregional” from the Conservatoire National de Region de Metz, a “Licence de Concert a l’unanimité avec felicitations du jury” from the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris Alfred Cortot, and a Master’s and a Music Teacher/Pedagogy degree from the Freiburg Musikhochschule in Germany Mr. Koch received a full scholarship at the USC Thornton School of Music, where he completed his Artist Diploma with John Perry. Mr. Koch has been nominated for the 2005 Lili Boulanger Award.

            On March 25, Mr. Koch will be featured in Saint-Saëns’ Concerto No. 5 for Piano and Orchestra. Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was renowned as a keyboard artist as well as a composer. He wrote his fifth (and last) piano concerto during a winter holiday in Egypt and performed the solo part at its premiere in 1896. This work reflects the composer’s fascination with the sights and sounds of the Nile valley. The Andante movement is based on a Nubian love song, while the insistent rhythm of the finale suggests the propellers of the ship carrying the voyager along the river. The entire concerto is bathed in warm southern Mediterranean ambiance and is an incandescent tribute to the country and culture that inspired it.

 

 

IN MEMORIAM:  DR. CHARLES ROBERT HAAG

 

            Beach Cities Symphony concertgoers who have read the program notes during the past couple of decades are most familiar with their author, Dr. Charles Robert "Bob" Haag. It has been his knowledge, wit and style that not only have educated our audiences about each program but have brought the music and its composers to life in ways not found in the usual music dictionaries.

            Bob Haag died January 4 at age 73, leaving a void not only in the Beach Cities Symphony but also in arts programs of the entire South Bay. It was through his office as Dean of Community Services at El Camino College that the symphony found its performing home in the college’s Marsee Auditorium, and it was because of his being impresario of the bookings at the college that Beach Cities Symphony became the college’s orchestra in residence. While he slotted such world-class performers as the Philadelphia Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic into the college’s yearly schedule, he always found room for our four performances each year.

            Music was his passion. Bob Haag was a Sterling Patron of Mu Phi Epsilon international music sorority and was a frequent judge for and a member of the Music Teachers Association.  He was organist for several churches, among them Covenant Presbyterian, Westchester, and Calvary Presbyterian, Hawthorne. He soloed with many local orchestras, including the Beach Cities Symphony and the Torrance Symphony. He was the first person to play the complete piano works of Haydn and Schubert in recital in Southern California and the second to play the complete Beethoven piano works, performing them in several series of recitals. And he did it all by memory.

            For nearly 20 years Bob Haag used his extensive knowledge of history and music as he and his wife, Mary, led travel groups to Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. Upon his retirement after 40 years at El Camino College both on the faculty and as an administrator, he ran for the Board of Trustees and was in the third year of his second term. Part of his motivation to be on the board was to ensure that the arts would always be paramount at the college.

            Memorial contributions may be made to the Robert Haag Music Scholarship Fund, El Camino College Foundation, 16007 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance 90506, or Wycliffe Bible Translators, P.O. Box 628200, Orlando, FL 32862.

 

Mary Ann Keating is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer who is currently on the board of the Beach Cities Symphony Association. She is also historical commissioner for the city of Redondo Beach.

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On December 7, 2004, Beach Cities Symphony volunteers once again donated their talents at Target in  Torrance during the store’s annual exclusive shopping time for seniors and youngsters with special needs. Left: Margaret McWilliams plays carols for a delighted audience. Right: Shown left to right, Ruth MacFarlane, Ada Belle Peterson, and Pat Chavez wrap gifts. Photos by violinist Anja Cerone, who also staffed the wrapping table.

 

OUR REMAINING CONCERTS FOR THE 2004-2005 SEASON:

 

March 25, 2005

            W. A. Mozart: Don Giovanni Overture, K. 527

            Camille Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto in F Major, Op. 103; Sebastian Koch, soloist

            Antonin Dvorak: Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 70

           

May 13, 2005

            Georges Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 1

            MTAC Artists of the Future soloists: to be announced

            Paul Dukas: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

 

March 25, 2005

PROGRAM NOTES

by Toni Empringham & Bill Malcolm

 

Don Giovanni Overture, K. 527

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Don Giovanni, which premičred in Prague on October 29, 1787, is one of three great comic operas that Mozart wrote with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (the others are Le nozze di Figaro and Cosě fan tutte). But although its subject is comic, Don Giovanni is framed by tragedy: it begins with a duel in which the Don kills the father of a woman he is seducing, and ends with demons from hell claiming the unrepentant womanizer for the underworld.

Mozart supposedly wrote the overture in a few hours the night and early morning before the dress rehearsal. It is generally agreed, however, that as was his habit the composer had a clear mental picture of the completed work. His procrastination lay in waiting until the last minute to commit the notes to paper.

The climax of the opera is prefigured by the first thirty measures of the overture, while the remaining measures portray the Don's libido-driven restlessness in sonata-allegro form, leading without a break into the opera's opening scene. Mozart later composed a thirteen-measure ending for the concert version of the piece.

 

                         --Toni Empringham

Concerto No. 5 for Piano and Orchestra, "Egyptian": opus 103

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

Saint-Saëns was a gifted pianist as well as a composer. He made his debut at age eleven, playing Mozart's B-flat concerto, K. 450, and part of Beethoven's third concerto for piano and orchestra. Saint-Saëns wrote his fifth and last piano concerto to commemorate the 50th anniversary of this debut and performed the solo part at its premičre in 1896.

Saint-Saëns was drawn to exotic locations and themes, as reflected in his Suite algerienne and Jota aragonese (both 1880), Havanaise for violin and orchestra (1891), and the fifth piano concerto, nicknamed the "Egyptian." This work was composed during a winter trip along the Nile and contains many images that impressed its creator, including the croaking river valley frogs, the songs of the boatmen, the bright Egyptian sun, and the pulsating propellers of the ship carrying the travelers home.

                         --T.E.

Symphony No. 7 in D minor, B. 141, op. 70

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)

Dvorák introduced and published this Symphony in D minor as the second of

his five symphonies rather than the seventh of his nine. It was only later

that musicologists reordered the four early symphonies he omitted from his

numbered cycle and inserted them into it. Many consider Op. 70, which is

now commonly regarded as Symphony No. 7, as the high point of Dvorák's

symphonic production although Symphony No. 9, "The New World," remains his

most famous.

Symphony No. 7 was the only symphony he composed under a commission (by the

London Philharmonic Society), and the only one of his mature symphonies to

be characterized by such a dark and passionate nature. It is speculated that

Dvorák was at a crossroad compositionally whether to proceed in the

nationalistic Czech character (with which his style and success had become

so readily identified) or to adopt a more 'international' approach (i.e.

German) in a bid for the still broader recognition enjoyed by his mentor

Johannes Brahms. Influences from Brahms' Third Symphony support the later

argument. The first movements of Dvorák's Seventh and Brahms' Third both

share a feeling of "six," that is, 6/8 meter in Dvorák and 6/4 in Brahms. In

both, the frequent emphasis on groups of three often imparts the feeling of

a fast waltz. In the last movement Dvorák's syncopated, repeated-note horn

passages is reminiscent of similar passages in Brahms' finale. Even so, the

restless Scherzo is based on the furiant, a Czech folk dance tying Dvorák to

his roots.

In 1884, Dvorák wrote to a friend: "Now I am occupied by my new symphony for

London, and wherever I go I have nothing else in mind but my work, which

must be such as to make a stir in the world and God grant that it may!"

It did. Dvorák completed the orchestration of the score on March 17, 1885,

but so eager were the public and the orchestra to hear the new work, that

rehearsal on the first movement had begun before the last movement was

completed. The symphony was a great success at its first performance on

April 22, 1885, at St. James Hall.

                                 --Bill Malcolm

 

 

Beach Cities Symphony News

 

Text: Toni Empringham    Graphics: Ralph Dame     Editor-in-Chief: Margaret McWilliams

 

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