AROUND TOWN/MUSIC: Classical Music Scene Still Going Strong

By Robert D. Thomas

Music
Critic

Pasadena
Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

This
article was first published April 3 in the above papers.

 

April
and May are always ultra-busy months for classical music lovers and this year
is certainly no exception. Here are a few local opportunities:

 

Saturday at 7:30 p.m., La Crescenta
Presbyterian Church

Music
Director Jeffrey Bernstein leads his Pasadena Master Chorale in a performance
of Brahms’ Ein Deutsche Requiem,
using a rarely heard two-piano version that the composer created. Scott
Kirchner and Alan Steinberger are the pianists; soprano Krystle Casey and
baritone are the vocal soloists. Last year this concert was a sellout. Info:
626/208-2009; www.pasadenamasterchorale.org

 

April 9 at 7:30 p.m., April 10 at 3 p.m.,
April 15 at 8 p.m., April 17 at 3 p.m. at The Woman’s Club of South Pasadena

Celestial
Opera, a group about which my colleague John Farrell has written glowingly in
the past, returns with a double bill of Puccini operas: Gianni Schicchi and Suor
Angelica.
These are the second and third one-act operas of Puccini’s
trilogy Il Trittico (the opener is Il
tabarro). The aria O mio babbino caro
(Oh, my dear papa)
from Gianni
Schicchi
is one of the opera genre’s most famous tunes. John Dennehy, Jr.
will direct and Joshua Heaphey will conduct a chamber orchestra. Info:
626-628-3305; www.celestialoperacompany.org

 

April 10 at 3 p.m.. Whittier High School

The
Rio Hondo Symphony concludes its 78th season with “Highland Frolic,” led by
Music Director Kimo Furumoto. The free concert will feature the two winners of
the orchestra’s 2011 Young Artists Competition. Vijay Venkatesh, 20, from
Laguna Niguel will be the soloist in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1, while
Chih-Chien Lin, a 26-year-old native of Taiwan who now lives in Los Angeles and
studies at USC, will perform in Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 2.

 

Furumoto
will also lead the orchestra in Mendelssohn’s Overture The Hebrides (aka Fingal’s
Cave)
and Sir Malcolm Arnold’s Four
Scottish Dances.
Info: 562/698-8626; www.riohondosymphony.org

 

April 10 at 7 p.m., Walt Disney Concert Hall

Grant
Gershon leads the Los Angeles Master Chorale, orchestra and soloists Elissa
Johnston, soprano; Sanford Sylvan, baritone; and Hak Soo Kim, tenor in Haydn’s
oratorio, The Creation, another
pinnacle of choral music. Info: 213-972-7282; www.lamc.org

 

April 16 at 8 p.m., Alex Theatre, Glendale;
April 17, 7 p.m., Royce Hall, UCLA

Music
Director Jeffrey Kahane leads his Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in a program of
John Harbison’s Gil pi usati,
Dvorak’s Serenade in E Major for Strings, and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (Emperor), with Jon Kimura Parker as
soloist. The Harbison piece was premiered by LACO in 1993. Parker (who was born
on Christmas Day 1959 in Vancouver) won the 1984 Leeds International Pianoforte
Competition and has gone on to an international career. Info: 213/622-7001 x
215; www.laco.org

 


Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Philharmonic concludes its “Aspects of Ades”
festival this week. Today at 2 p.m. in Walt Disney Concert Hall, British
composer/conductor/pianist Thomas Ades conducts two works by Stravinsky and his
own In Seven Days, a video-ballet in seven movements.

 

On
Tuesday night at 8 p.m., Ades conducts and plays his own music with the Phil’s
New Music Group in a “Green Umbrella” concert. Thursday and Friday he conducts
the Phil and soloists in the world premiere of Irish Composer Gerald Barry’s
opera The Importance of Being Earnest.
The festival concludes Saturday with Ades leading the Phil in the West Coast
premiere of his Polaris and Olivier
Messiaen’s clairs sur l’Au-Del.

 

In
the midst of all of this, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble appear
Monday night in Disney Hall at 8 p.m.

 

Info:
323/850-2000; www.laphil.com

_____________________

 


Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted
with attribution.

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