Widely considered the greatest cellist alive today, Yo-Yo Ma makes a special Orange County appearance to honor Music Director Carl St.Clair’s 25th anniversary season with Pacific Symphony. One of classical music’s true superstars and an ambassador for the art form, Ma performs the passionate and ground-breaking Cello Concerto by Antonin Dvořák.
Filled with dramatic flair and romantic singing lines, the concerto captures the human quality of the solo instrument like none before it. Led by St.Clair, the Symphony shines with another virtuosic masterpiece as Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” opens the concert.
Arranged for orchestra by Maurice Ravel, the original 15-part piano work was written both to create a musical evocation of a series of paintings and to memorialize the artist who painted them, Viktor Hartmann.
This special concert takes place on Tuesday, May 5, at 8 p.m. in the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. A limited number of tickets are available starting at $200. For more information or to purchase tickets, call (714) 755-5799 or click here.
“I am honored that so many of my musical friends, including Yo-Yo Ma, have chosen to be with us during this season,” says Maestro St.Clair. “It allows me an opportunity to pay my appreciation to them for all they have meant to me, Pacific Symphony and to our audiences during my tenure as music director.”
Dvořák’s Cello Concerto is one of those pieces that is said to have “changed everything.” Other masterpieces for the cello preceded it, including Bach’s six suites for unaccompanied cello, and cello concertos by Schumann and Saint-Saëns. But before Dvořák wrote this concerto for his friend Hanuš Wihan, the instrument was viewed mainly as suitable for chamber music or as a team player in the orchestra. This is a concerto not of intimacy but of grandeur and passion, imbued with a sense of importance and human dimension in the solo voice that is now taken for granted in cello compositions.
The Symphony opens the evening with Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” orchestrated by Ravel. Over time, Mussorgsky has acquired a reputation as a wild man of Russian music—a notion that is understandable if not entirely deserved; it is certainly reinforced by the thundering climaxes heard in “Pictures at an Exhibition,” which has become known as a virtuoso showpiece in both its orchestral and solo-piano forms.
“Pictures at an Exhibition” evokes the feeling of walking through an art exhibit, and was written in honor of Mussorgsky’s friend, Viktor Hartmann, after learning of his untimely passing. Structurally, there is nothing in the classical repertoire that resembles “Pictures at an Exhibition,” which is constructed as a series of musical paintings separated by promenades that combine to simulate the experience of walking through a gallery. The pictures on which it is based are mostly lost to history, but the surviving paintings by Hartmann seem rather academic and subdued compared to Mussorgsky’s music, which is full of bold dynamics and innovative harmonies.
The guest star of the evening, Yo-Yo Ma, remains one of the best-selling recording artists in the classical field, with more than 90 albums reflecting his wide-ranging interests. He has made several successful recordings that defy categorization, among them “Hush” with Bobby McFerrin, “Appalachia Waltz” and “Appalachian Journey” with Mark O’Connor and Edgar Meyer, and two Grammy-winning tributes to the music of Brazil, “Obrigado Brazil” and “Obrigado Brazil—Live in Concert.”
Ma’s recent recordings include Mendelssohn Trios with Emanuel Ax and Itzhak Perlman; “The Goat Rodeo Sessions” with Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile and Stuart Duncan (which received the 2013 Grammy for Best Folk Album); and “A Playlist Without Borders” with the Silk Road Ensemble released in 2013.
This concert is sponsored by Charlie and Liang Zhang, Jennifer Cheng and the Cheng Family Foundation, Tina and Tony Guilder, and Janet Zheng Kong and Donald Hu.
Upcoming Concerts
Buy TicketsVertigo
May 1-2, 2015, 8 p.m.
Buy TicketsYo-Yo Ma
May 5, 2015, 8 p.m.
Buy TicketsBeethoven’s “Emperor”
May 7-9, 2015, 8 p.m.
Get Free TicketsPacific Symphony Santiago Strings
May 9, 2015, 3 p.m.
Get Free TicketsPacific Symphony Youth Wind Ensemble
May 10, 2015, 1 p.m.
Get Free TicketsPacific Symphony Youth Orchestra
May 10, 2015, 7 p.m.
Buy TicketsBeethoven, Brahms and Schubert
May 10, 2015, 3 p.m.
Get Free TicketsOC Can You Play With Us? Side-by-Side
May 13, 2015, 7 p.m.
Get Free TicketsOC Can You Play With Us? Chamber Edition
May 14, 2015, 7 p.m.
Buy TicketsAndré Previn
May 28-30, 2015, 8 p.m.
