FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2007

Marsee Auditorium, El Camino College

Crenshaw Blvd. at Redondo Beach Blvd.

FREE ADMISSION and FREE PARKING

Concert time: 8:15 p.m., pre-concert lecture: 7:30 p.m.

Information: (310) 379-9725 or (310) 539-4649 or http://BeachCitiesSymphony.org.

PROGRAM

Nicholas Sobko: Scenes from The Enchanted Castle

Ludwig van Beethoven: Two Romances for Violin and Orchestra

Rebecca Rutkowski, violin soloist

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 2, Resurrection (4th and 5th movements)

Rhonda Dillon, soprano soloist

Nancy O’Brien, alto soloist

Combined choruses from El Camino College

Backstage musicians from El Camino College Orchestra

PROGRAM BIOGRAPHIES

SEASON OPENS WITH BEETHOVEN’S
TWO ROMANCES FOR VIOLIN

Rebecca Rutkowski
Violin Soloist

“I have lived my life in awe, gratitude, and adoration of Beethoven’s abilities to write what he has heard and felt in the spheres. It is truly an honor and gift to be asked to play the Beethoven Romances with Maestro Brisk and the Beach Cities Symphony.”

Rebecca Rutkowski is an active freelance musician in Southern California. She is the concertmaster of Beach Cities, Peninsula, and Topanga Symphonies, and is a regular member of the Pasadena and Glendale Symphonies and the South Bay Chamber Orchestra. She is also a performing member of the American Ballet Theater and Joffrey Ballet orchestras. In addition to her work at the Ojai Music Festival, summers find her regularly at the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival.

A graduate of UCLA and Case Western Reserve University as a scholarship student of Cleveland Orchestra Concertmaster Daniel Majeske, Miss Rutkowski has worked with many of today’s legendary artists and teachers. Additionally, she holds several première performances to her credit and has commissioned both solo and chamber works.

As one of the founding members of the Amati Chamber Society, Ms. Rutkowski devotes much of her year to performing and teaching chamber music. She has her own violin studio in the South Bay and is a frequent judge at music competitions.

The Beach Cities Symphony is proud to present this solo performance by Ms. Rutkowski playing Beethoven’s two Romances for Violin and Orchestra.

VOCALISTS PERFORM MAHLER

The season’s opening night performance will include Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” with assistance from the El Camino College choruses and backstage musicians from the ECC orchestra. Featured vocalists will be Rhonda Dillon, soprano, and Nancy O’Brien, alto.

Rhonda Dillon made her Broadway debut in The Phantom of the Opera and has subsequently appeared as both the prima donna Carlotta and the ballet mistress Madame Giry with many companies in the U.S. She has also sung the role of Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music with several different local companies. Her operatic performances ranging from the Puccini heroines to Mozart’s Donna Anna have taken her to venues throughout North America and Europe. Her voice may be heard on the film scores of Empire of the Sun, Burglar, and Like Father, Like Son. Ms. Dillon holds a B.A. in voice and an M.A. in choral conducting from USC. She loves recital work and has just celebrated her eighth appearance in the Resident Artist Series at El Camino College this summer.

Nancy O’Brien has performed as a soloist and chorister with the Roger Wagner Chorale, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, I Cantori, the Breckenridge Festival, the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, and the Los Angeles Music Center Opera. Performances with these organizations have allowed her to tour the U.S., Asia, Europe, Australia, Israel, Australia, and the former Soviet Union. She holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from UCLA and has completed additional doctoral level music study at USC.

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Nicholas J. Sobko

Composer, Scenes from the Enchanted Castle. Nicholas Sobko was born in 1984 and began piano lessons at age seven; he ventured into saxophone the following year. He started composing at the age of 12 while learning standard theory under Dr. William Henderson and studying saxophone under Chris Greco and Glen Kamida. Between ages 14 and 18 he studied saxophone, clarinet, and oboe under Carlos Andwandter and Glen Kamida. During this time he composed works for concert band; one of these, The Gemstone Suite, won third place in a regional district arts competition. Mr. Sobko composed his first piano sonata in 2003 and started composing for orchestra while studying clarinet under James E. Mack, who later aided him in publishing his first work, a flute bagatelle. In 2004 he completed an operetta, Vero Amour; this work received its première performance in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, in February of 2007 by the Tokyo City Symphony. His works have also been performed in Torrance, Valencia, Manhattan, London, Paris, and Vienna. While under the editorial eye and council of Dr. Dane Teter, Mr. Sobko has composed two suites for orchestra and choir, a symphony, three contrasting pieces for concert band, two operettas, a mass, several single orchestral works, film scores, a musical, and music for chamber ensembles and piano. His self-taught style derives from the analysis of contemporary composers such as John Williams, James Horner, and Danny Elfman, and of texts by Ravel, Berlioz, Hindemith, Schoenburg, and Rimsky-Korsakoff.

PROGRAM NOTES

Scenes from the Enchanted Castle
Nicholas J. Sobko

Scenes from the Enchanted Castle is a special collaboration of works arranged exclusively for the Beach Cities Symphony. This work consists of three movements from three different pieces written by the composer between 2006 and 2007 as a reflection about the woman he loves, Tori Reysack. Opening this three-movement work is the Adagio from Symphony No. 1 which was given its name, “The Tragic Symphony,” by composers Michael Pizarro and Frank Tichelli. The main theme played by solo clarinet and strings starts the piece to a slow and sad tone, with a slight Native American texture to the melody. The constant theme is changed throughout the piece until it becomes aggressive, with a hint of frustration-based joy, then fades into nothing. This is the moment the young man, in dismay, finds his love gone. What she left him is a dream.

The second movement is the Finale from Suite No. 2, “Chronoscapes” for orchestra. “Chronoscapes” was written in the nature of sharing a wonderful fantasy story through music. It starts off slowly and sweetly as the mystical clock brings our hero back to his own time. However, the evil wizard comes in to take the clock back. The battle rages on as the clock sends them both traversing through different places in time, all the themes from this five- movement suite clashing together violently. As the hero becomes victorious it transitions back to the dark ages. The clock chiming diminishes to a magical end.

The final movement to Scenes from the Enchanted Castle is the fifth movement, “Autumn Ruins,” from the six-movement Suite No. 1, “The Enchanted Castle” for Orchestra and Choir. The hero wanted to build the woman he loved an enchanted and magical castle, but he did it using the only craft he truly knew, composition. “Autumn Ruins” follows the fourth movement, “Summer Battle.” The battle is over leaving nothing but ruins. This movement, though seeming calm, still brings out through great fanfares that though the castle no longer stands it still shows signs of greatness and glory of days long past.

N. Sobko

Romance No. 1 in G Major, Op. 40; Romance No. 2 in F Major, Op. 50
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

In the early 1790s, Beethoven started a Violin Concerto in C major which he left incomplete. It has been suggested that the Romances may have been written considerably earlier, and that one or the other may have been intended as the slow movement for the fragmentary C major Violin Concerto. The orchestration is similar to that of Haydn (without clarinets), with whom Beethoven had been studying. A slow movement in either key—F major or G major—would work in the context of a concerto in C major, but the theory would be more convincing if we had only one Romance rather than two. If one was to be the slow movement of the Concerto, what was the other’s role? It seems odd that Beethoven should write unattached slow movements as concert pieces, but in a letter to his friend, Franz Wegeler, he bragged of six or seven publishers clamoring for his works and that he was being offered more commissions than he could carry out.

As you may have guessed, little is known as to the precise nature of these two Romances, but regardless of the intent of their composition, both remain charming classical works. The Romance in F major was apparently the first of the two to be composed. It almost certainly originated in the second half of the 1790s, and musicologists seem to have reached a consensus to date it circa 1798. The opus numbers were assigned by Beethoven’s publishers, and therefore follow the order in which his works were published, rather than the order they were written. This is why, for example, the Romance in F Major of 1798 is Opus 50 (published 1805), when the Kreutzer Sonata, Opus 47, and the Waldstein Sonata, Opus 53, both middle Beethoven style, were written in 1802 and 1803 respectively. The Romance Op. 40 is believed to have been written in 1801 (at the onset of Beethoven’s deafness, which he also confessed in a letter to Wegeler) and published in 1803.

Bill Malcolm

Symphony No. 2 in C minor, “Resurrection”
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

Mahler wrote his Second Symphony over a period of six years; he finished the first movement in 1888, the second and third movements in 1893, and the finale, movements four and five, in 1894. The completed symphony premièred in Berlin on December 13, 1895, with the composer conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Stern Singakademie choir, the Sängerbund des Lehrerverein (Singers’ Association of the Teachers Society), and two soloists from the Hamburg Opera.

The ending of Symphony No. 2 was inspired by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s “Resurrection” chorale, which Mahler heard when it was performed at the funeral of the renowned conductor Hans von Bulow. Mahler’s assessment of his own “Resurrection,” in a letter to Dr. Arnold Berliner, is as follows: “The Finale is imposing and ends with a chorus for which I have written the text myself . . . . It is a bold, powerfully constructed work. The final crescendo is gigantic.” To introduce this wall of sound, the fourth movement uses Mahler’s rendition of a song from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn, a collection of German folk tunes) entitled “Urlicht” (“Primeval Light”). It begins: “Man’s lot is of such extreme necessity, such bitter pain,” and concludes, “I would rather be in Heaven . . . . I am from God and shall return to God.” The quiet beauty of this contralto solo backed by a brass chorale is in startling contrast to the thunderous conclusion of orchestra and full chorus. The final lyrics declaim, “I shall die, so that I may live again. You will rise again, my heart . . . . Your beating will be enough to carry you to God.”

Toni Empringham

Information

Beach Cities Symphony Association, Inc.

P.O. Box 248

Redondo Beach, CA 90277-0248

Beach Cities Symphony News information: 310-379-9725, 310-539-4649, or http://BeachCitiesSymphony.org or info@BeachCitiesSymphony.org.

Editors: Pat Chavez, Margaret McWilliams

Graphics: David Schwartz, Ralph Dame

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Last modified October 21, 2007

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