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!

Having a cosy Sunday afternoon, staying out of the rain and warm by the fire.  JC Bach Symphonies (all of them one after the other) are playing on the stereo, and duck is on tonight's menu.  Kaly is stuffing the breast with garlic, crushed fennel seeds, fresh chopped rosemary, grated Parmesan, olive oil, salt and Tellicherry pepper.  Later, it will be pan seared and finished in the oven.  She will then confit the legs, thighs and wings for a future winter supper.  I will produce a stock from the carcass and a duck liver pâté with cognac for which I would be willing to share recipe (the recipe and the cognac for the matter.)  We have a great friend from New York showing up for dinner and a night stay.  We are completely out of Pinot Noir and I am not going to the store in the rain.  I guess it is time for another Pinot gathering trip to Santa Barbara Wine Country.   Cabernets are a bit too powerful.  I have rummaged through the wine pile and found a bottle of Tesoro 2006, mostly Merlot with some Cabernet from the Esterhazy Estate in Eisenstadt, Austria.  I have been saving it for a special occasion, so I guess this is it.  I should change the Symphonies on the stereo to Haydn.  I will when I open the bottle.

Opening Night of the BBC Proms

To wrap up our summer Philharmonic Society festival trip, we finished in London with a couple of plays – Warhorse and Pricilla, Queen of the Desert - and the opening night of the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall with a performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Here is a clip of that performance:

Youtube has disabled the embedding for this second video I want to share with you, so here is a link to another clip of the 2006 Proms final night conducted by my old friend Sir Mark Elder. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ0oCmDXrVk

Food in London is great. Try St. John, J. Sheekey (the best seafood) and Just St. James (in early summer you have to have the Jersey gold potatoes and you will find Nutbourne Wine here).

Cooking class at La Villa des Chefs

While in Aix, our group took a cooking class at La Villa des Chefs given by one star Michelin chef René Berger. It was a blast.


Among other wonderful ingredients, we used Limousin beef. This is an animal native to France from around the Limoges region. The breed is 20,000 years old and is portrayed in a number of prehistoric cave paintings. We have eaten it in Paris at Le Severo, the place for steak frites. We pan seared filets at our cooking class. The flavor was amazing because the filet was marbled with some fat, unlike the normally tender but blah tasting filets we get here. Look at the marbling on one of pieces before we put it on heat. Beautiful to behold!

We washed it down with some wonderful local red wine. Domaine Richeaume is a red produced just outside Aix, a very tasty blend of Cabaret Sauvigon and Syrah – rich, intense and deeply fun. The beef and wine you can find the United States if you put in an enormous effort. It is easier to go to Aix. Please enjoy.

Keeping your cool in Aix-en-Provence

We just came back from a festival trip in Europe with some of our Philharmonic Society patrons, something we try to do every summer. The festival in Aix-en-Provence is very cool. The town is fun. Hanging out in anyone of the cafes along the Cours Mirabeau is the thing. Sipping wine, sampling the local cuisine is what you do along with people watching. Jessica Alba walked into our restaurant. It’s hot. Very hot. For that matter, she’s hot. Here is a shot of a shady street which is highly recommended if it is going in your direction.

You can easily pick out the tourists. They are walking on the sunny side of the street, and dying. The locals of course stick to the shady side. It pays to be observant. Do avoid heat stroke. Please enjoy the shade in the OC this summer should it ever get hot again.