 Tuned In: All that glittery Gypsy music will be GoldPosted: 11/06/2009 12:01:00 AM PST
The Young People's Symphony Orchestra — a Berkeley-based group that dates back to 1935 and is California's oldest youth orchestra — has something special on tap for the opening of its 74th season Nov. 14. Violinist Joseph Gold, a former YPSO violin coach, a recognized authority on the career and ouevre of 19th-century violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate and a former accompanist for the late Luciano Pavarotti, is returning as guest soloist in a performance of Sarasate's "Carmen Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra." This 1883 composition took the major themes from Georges Bizet's most famous opera and reworked them into an orchestral piece, with fiery passagework for the violin. Also on the program, conducted by David Ramadanoff, are Saint-Saens' "Dance Macabre," Dvorak's "Carnival Overture" and his Symphony No. 8 in G major. The 102 players in the YPSO range in age from 11 to 20 and come from 31 cities in five Bay Area counties. The concert takes place at 8 p.m. in Berkeley's First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets, at $15 general and $12 for students and seniors, are available at 510-849-9776 or www.ypsomusic.net. Some program selections will be repeated in a free Community Music Day collaboration with the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts at 2 p.m. Nov. 15 in the Richmond Auditorium, 403 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond.
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Tickets to the 3 p.m. performance in UC Berkeley's Hertz Hall are $48, available at 510-642-9988 or www.calperformances.org. Tickets to the S.F. Symphony programs, $35-$135, can be purchased at 415-864-6000 or www.sfsymphony.org. OPERATIC EXPANSION: The Oakland East Bay Symphony's big season opener, "A Night at the Opera," just got bigger. Earlier this week conductor Michael Morgan announced that in addition to soprano Hope Briggs and tenor Kalil Wilson, six other singers with operatic chops have signed on. Soprano Heidi Moss, mezzo-soprano Lori Willis, tenor AJ Glueckert, baritones Zachary Gordin and Brian Leerhuber and bass-baritone Joshua Bloom also will join the orchestra, the Oakland East Bay Symphony Chorus and the Oakland-East Bay Gay Men's Chorus onstage at the Paramount Theatre for a program of excerpts from Verdi's "Aida," "La Forza del Destino" and "Nabucco"; Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor"; Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana"; Wagner's "The Ring Cycle"; Massenet's "Herodiade" and Bernstein's "Candide." Tickets for the 8 p.m. Nov. 13 performance are $20-$65. Call 800-745-3000 or visit www.oebs.org. TWO SCHOOLS, ONE MASTERPIECE: A highly unusual student collaboration on an infrequently performed but historically significant work takes place Nov. 14 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where members of the school's elite New Music Ensemble join Master of Fine Arts candidates from the American Conservatory Theater in a production of Igor Stravinsky's "Soldier's Tale." Composed in 1918 at the height of World War I, the theatrical work deploys a scaled-down musical ensemble of seven players interacting on stage with the actors to spin a tale about a Russian soldier who sells his precious fiddle and his peace of mind to the devil. The music is eclectic, sarcastic and biting, and black humor abounds. The work, also known as "L' Histoire du Soldat," has inspired creative outbursts from artists as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut, Wynton Marsalis and Peter Martins of New York City Ballet. One of Stravinsky's innovations — assigning multiple percussion parts to a single player — since has become accepted practice in chamber music compositions. There will be two performances in English, at 7 and 9 p.m. at 50 Oak St. in San Francisco. Tickets, at $15-$20, are available at 415-503-6275. NEW BLOOD AT THE OPERA: After 15 years, Berkeley Opera's Jonathan Khuner is taking off his artistic director's hat and placing it squarely on the head of a new associate: Mark Streshinsky, who has done operatic staging at San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera and the major houses in Dallas, Los Angeles and Seattle as well as creating several productions, including "Eugene Onegin," for Berkeley. Khuner, who will remain as music director, had this classy comment to make earlier this week about the sidestep: "While I'll concentrate happily on the musical aspects of our organization, still playing an integral but less encompassing part, I will take great pleasure in observing Berkeley Opera's growth in new and healthy directions." Contact Sue Gilmore at sgilmore@bayareanewsgroup.com. | 
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