Celebrate LISZT with a Lecture, Dinner and two Concerts

As we enter the New Year, I would like to thank all of you for your continued support, and on behalf of the Philharmonic Society, we wish you a prosperous and music-filled year!

2011 marks the 200th birthday anniversary of beloved composer Franz Liszt. As extensive as his compositions were, it was the piano that gave him his opportunity for greatness. Therefore, the Society is pleased to present the LISZT BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION.

The celebration begins with a lecture by musicologist and Liszt biographer Dr. Alan Walker entitled “Liszt and the Keyboard.” Part of the What Makes Music Beautiful? lecture series, Dr. Walker will discuss the piano music of Liszt. (Wednesday, January 19, 2011, 7pm at Irvine Barclay Theatre). Tickets are $36 and include wine tasting.

The celebration concludes with a full performance of Liszt’s most monumental work—Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage)—performed by French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie, who, you might recall, dazzled us with the complete Chopin Etudes last season. The piece will be played over the course of two concerts (Sunday, January 23, 2011, 3pm and 7pm, at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Orange County Performing Arts Center, part of Segerstrom Center for the Arts). Part of the Donna L. Kendall Classical Series, the 3pm concert program will feature Première année: Suisse (First Year: Switzerland) and Troisième année (Third Year) movements 1-4, and the 7pm concert program will feature Troisième année (Third Year) movements 5-7, and Deuxième année: Italie (Second Year: Italy). Tickets for each concert start at $30.

Inspired by my recent trip to the Glyndebourne Festival in England, where attendees had the opportunity to dine between long intervals during performances, we introduce a special dinner offer available for all Louis Lortie concert-goers. Enjoy a “perfectly-timed,” pre-paid three-course dinner between the 3pm and 7pm concerts with one of our partner restaurants. Participating restaurants include AnQi by Crustacean, Charlie Palmer, and Leatherby’s Café Rouge. Packages include dinner, a beverage of choice, tax and gratuity, and free shuttle transportation to and from the restaurants. Menus can be found under our "Current News" section.

If you have already purchased your tickets for this concert and would like to take advantage of the special dinner offer, please visit www.PhilharmonicSociety.org/Dining, or call the Philharmonic Society box office at (949) 553-2422 to order your dinner package. Concert tickets are also available for purchase at our box office.

We hope that you will take advantage of this special dinner offer and we look forward to seeing you at the lecture and performance!

The New Year is upon us

The New Year is upon us.  I am renewing the pledges of numerous 2010 resolutions.  Will this be the year that I get an iPhone, BlackBerry or some such?  The Philharmonic Society staff has been badgering me to procure one of these devices for some time and I have stubbornly refused.  I may relent in 2011.   I have always been behind the curve of these new developments.  Techno-peasant though I am, I do understand this bit from the BBC.  Please enjoy.  (Thanks Karen.)

200th Birthday of Franz Liszt

Liszt, Louis Lortie, and Beethoven

2011 is the 200th birthday of Franz Liszt. Last year belonged to Chopin and Schumann and I felt I must give Mr. Liszt his due. As extensive as his compositions are, we felt that it was the piano that gave him his opportunity for greatness; therefore, we have invited Louis Lortie to perform the composer’s most monumental work—Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). This giant task takes two recitals and a massive brain and heart to remember it all and perform it brilliantly. Louis Lortie is the man for the job. You will recall when he substituted last season for the ailing Yuja Wang, he dazzled us with the complete Chopin Etudes. I love to tell this story. Chairman of the Board Sabra Bordas, my wife Kaly and I were having a quite a good lunch at Il Barone Ristorante, when my cell phone rang. Jeff Mistri, our artistic administrator, was on the other end telling me that Yuja was cancelling the next night and asked what did I think of having Louis Lortie take her place. What was astounding is how he managed to have Louis tracked down at the Newark Airport awaiting a flight home to Berlin (a flight that was not going to happen because of that volcano problem, you remember). Things have a way of working out, often during a very pleasant lunch.

I have already told you about our project of late Beethoven works to be scheduled over the next two seasons, inspired by the play “33 Variations” which opens at the Ahmanson Theatre at the end of this month. We are providing a bus to the 2pm performance on February 5th. More about that on my next blog. There is a very interesting Liszt connection. As a ten-year-old, the young composer was able to have his first work published in Anton Diabelli’s Vaterländischer Künstlerverein (Fatherland Artist Society), a collection of 83 variations on a “waltz” composed by the publisher himself—50 variations by a variety of composers, including Liszt, and 33 by Beethoven (who was asked only to write a single variation), which are of course known as his Diabelli Variations. The little composer was probably not on Diabelli’s original invite list. Franz’s teacher Carl Czerny was and probably got him added to it. Czerny, being a student of Beethoven, was the first composer Diabelli approached and he decided to write the last variation, sort of an epigram.

As we all know, the 19th century was an extraordinary period for music. Then as now, it seemed that all the musicians and composers knew one another. Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage was written while he was having an affair with Marie d’Agoult while they were travelling through Switzerland and Italy. They produced three illegitimate children. The middle one, Cosima, married Hans von Bülow and later Richard Wagner, which is another can of worms. Their story must have inspired the creation of Desperate Housewives.

A Happy New Year! Please enjoy!

Vienna Philharmonic: New Ladies' Uniform

The Vienna Philharmonic is in the news again.  The ladies of the orchestra now have new concert attire – pinstriped pants and a long black blazer over a white blouse and gray gilet.  According to the Associated Press, the outfit was designed by Markus Binder, a 22-year-old fashion student.  There are plans to come up with something similar for the males.  You can see the new outfits on television on the annual New Year’s concert.  There will be four women in the orchestra.  Progress is slow and steady, but progress none the less.  I would certainly expect that we can see them in person with the new outfits here when the Vienna Philharmonic comes to the Rénee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall on March 3, 2011.

The Christmas Can-Can

Philip Glass

It is always a wonderful treat to be connected to contemporary composers.  Back in November, Philip Glass paid us a visit when we presented Bobby McDuffie and the Venice Baroque Orchestra in the West Coast premiere of his new violin concerto.  This picture was shot by an audience member catching a program page with Glass’s picture and him seated in front.  Nice shot. 

 The concerto was terrific, especially the beautiful second movement.

Kronos comes this April with a new piece by Steve Reich, part of a co-commissioning project that we are a part of.  We hope Steve will be here.   Kronos has appeared with us somewhat regularly over the last 16 years.  They did the West Premiere of Henryk Gorecki’s Third String Quartet for us several years ago, a dark but beautiful piece.  Gorecki passed away last month.

Cool new stuff is coming next season.  We have another Ellen Taaffe Zwillich commission to look forward to next season.  It will be a sextet with piano performed by the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, violist Michael Tree and bass Harold Robinson in February 2012   Also the same month, Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony are doing a new Mason Bates piece.  In March 2012, Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony are performing a new percussion concerto by Jennifer Higdon featuring Colin Curry, percussionist.  Kaiji Saariaho’s new piece “Orion” will be performed by Franz Welser-Mőst and the Cleveland Orchestra in April 2012.  There is a lot coming up.  Subscriptions for next season go on sale next month.

Daddy Long Legs

One of the delights of the holiday season is the proliferation of performances of music, dance and theater.  We were very happy with a new musical at the Laguna Playhouse which runs through Christmas Eve.  It is “Daddy Long Legs,” book by John Caird and music/lyrics by Paul Gordon.  It has a cast of two with Megan McGinnis and Robert Adelman Hancock, a pair of wonderful actors singers with impeccable pitch.  This is a perfect date night or the thing if your spirits need a lift.  I highly recommend it.