From the Pacific coast, the San Diego Symphony takes its audience on a tour of the classics this season, all the way from Scotland to Spain, with stopovers in nearby Hollywood.
The tartan-inspired season opener begins with a tribute to 80th birthday boy Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, whose An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise will get things off to a festive start. Hilary Hahn, one of many star soloists rostered, performs music of a different ‘Max’ – Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, with its engaging treatment of traditional folk melodies. Bruch, who never set foot in Scotland, nevertheless manages to conjure up an authentic Scots twang in his orchestration, including prominent role for harp.
Felix Mendelssohn did visit Scotland, embarking on a walkng tour in 1829. His visit to Staffa inspired his Hebrides Overture, while Edinburgh’s Holyrood Palace gave him the idea for a “Scottish” Symphony. He was also an accomplished artist, sketching and painting watercolours on his journey. Jahja Ling, San Diego’s Music Director since 2004, is at the helm, whisking listeners on this Highland fling around Scotland.
Veteran British conductor Sir Neville Marriner, 90 this year, steers an unlikely course between Hollywood and the Malvern Hills in his January concerts. Erich Korngold’s music is known to many listeners because of his film scores for swashbuckling epics starring Errol Flynn, but his concert works are superb. The most renowned example is his Violin Concerto, the first work he wrote following his retirement from writing for the movies, partly stung by accusations that he had sold his integrity to Hollywood. It was premiered by the great violinist Jascha Heifetz in 1947 and is lushly romantic in tone for the first two movements, before a fiendishly difficult finale. Alina Pogostina tackles Korngold’s challenging score, before Marriner guides the San Diego Symphony through Elgar’s affectionate series of portraits in the Enigma Variations. Elgar never revealed the source of the original ‘enigma’ theme but the variations which follow treat the music as representations of his ‘friends pictured within’.
Aram Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto is about as rarely performed as Barber’s. Dedicated to David Oistrakh, it’s full of lively Armenian rhythms, particularly the wild finale. Philippe Quint is the intrepid soloist stepping into Oistrakh’s shoes. Other soloists of note in the season include Vadym Kholodenko, gold medallist in the Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, who performs Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto no. 2 in G minor, and American soprano, Nicole Cabell, winner of the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in Strauss' Four Last Songs. Legendary pianist Richard Goode provides a masterclass in Mozartian playing in the Piano Concerto no. 25 in C major.