It is with great pleasure and relief that I pass on the news that the 2021-22 season of Camerata Pacifica will proceed, as planned, with live concerts in real time, in their four traditional venues.
The Camerata, under the guidance of founder/artistic director, Adrian Spence — a remarkably successful classical music entrepreneur, who, for 36 years, has kept his ensemble more or less in the black without resorting to fashioning their programs around the lowest common denominator — has been a bright beacon for music lovers throughout the pandemic.
As they were usually the first out the gate with their opening concerts in each new season, so they went on line early and in force when the concert halls went dark. For three decades, the Camerata has been making video recordings of all their concerts, so that, when the need arose, they had access to an all but inexhaustible cache of video performances to rearrange into separate concerts for their YouTube Channel.
For those of us who cannot live without music, the online concerts have been, literally, life-savers. All in all, I believe Adrian Spence is some kind of genius.
(I don’t mind admitting this, though you mustn’t think that Adrian and I are close friends, or anything. In the 30 or so years I have known him, I doubt we have spent an hour together, all told. With some justice, Adrian has always been wary of me — a regularly, if not widely read writer, writing about his organization, which is utterly dependent on public approval — and I’ve had the feeling he continues to wait for he other shoe to drop. On my side, I have preferred to admire the pugnacious Ulsterman at a distance, rather than make any attempt to hang out with him. However, the leadership he has displayed in the health crisis has impressed me deeply, and I felt I ought to mention it.)
The Camerata’s “October” program consists of César Franck‘s “Violin & Piano Sonata in A-Major” (1886); John Corigliano‘s “The Red Violin Caprices for Solo Violin” (1999); and Bedřich Smetana‘s “Piano Trio in g-minor, Opus 15” (1855), performed by Camerattans Paul Huang, violin; Ani Aznavoorian, cello; and Gilles Vonsattel, piano.
This program will be performed — again, LIVE AND ON STAGE — at 7.30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 8, in Hahn Hall, on the Music Academy of the West campus, 1070 Fairway Road; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 5, in Rothenberg Hall of The Huntington Museum in San Marino, 1151 Oxford Road; 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 7, in Zipper Hall of The Colburn School in Los Angeles, 200 S Grand Ave.; and 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 10 in the Museum of Ventura County in Ventura, 100 E. Main St.
The gorgeous, subtle Franck sonata has been rearranged for just about every conceivable instrument, plus piano — cello; viola; double bass; flute; oboe; clarinet; alto saxophone; and tuba; as well as organ with choir; violin and strings; violin and orchestra; piano duet and piano solo, both by pianist and composer, Alfred Cortot — although the version for cello, prepared by the cellist Jules Delsart, is the only one sanctioned by the composer (after considerable research through Franck’s papers, the cellist Pablo Casals suggested the sonata was originally written for cello and piano, and was turned into a violin sonata when the composer wanted one to give as a wedding present for his brilliant compatriot, the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe).
Corigliano’s first major composition was a violin-piano sonata composed in 1963, subsequently recorded by his father, John Paul Corigliano, Sr., who was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic 1943-66. The sonorities of the violin, thus, are the de-facto basis for his compositions. His father didn’t want him to become a composer, having seen too many of the craft, including Béla Bartók, die in poverty.
John got around this very real concern by scoring motion pictures, including Ken Russell’s “Altered States (1980),” Hugh Hudson’s “Revolution,” and François Girard’s “The Red Violin (1997).”
The range of forms and compositional styles available to Corigliano may be guessed at from the fact that he has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and an Oscar. He first arranged his “Red Violin” score as a violin concerto, recorded by Joshua Bell, and then as the “Caprices,” which we will hear Paul Huang play in Hahn Hall.
Smetana is best known to his fellow Czechs as an opera composer, and to the concert-going public, for his epic romantic cycle of orchestral poems, “Má Vlast/My Country (1872-1874)” which includes the unforgettable “Moldau.”
He also composed a considerable amount of chamber music, which is often overshadowed, in the public mind, by his First String Quartet, “From My Life,” which attempts to describe, in graphic musical terms, the destruction of his mental and physical health by syphilis. (Despite its inherent sensationalism, it is a great work.)
The Opus 15 “Trio” is a highly dramatic score, agitated but generally melodic, and mesmerizing in its romantic intensity.
Tickets to the Santa Barbara concert are available at https://cameratapacifica.secure.force.com/ticket#/instances/a0F6e00000WLe2ZEAT
The San Marino concert at https://cameratapacifica.secure.force.com/ticket#/instances/a0F6e00000WLe2ZEAT
The Zipper Hall concert at https://cameratapacifica.secure.force.com/ticket#/instances/a0F6e00000WLe1bEAD
The Ventura concert at https://cameratapacifica.secure.force.com/ticket#/instances/a0F6e00000WLe0xEAD
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.