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MUSIC SHORTS
News Briefs
October 3, 2000
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By Janos Gereben
The Swiss Are Coming!
By coincidence (or is it a plot?), Switzerland is sending musicians galore to the Bay Area this month. Sponsored by the Swiss Consulate and Switzerland's Willy Burkhard Foundation, pianist Eva-Maria Zimmermann and flutist Heidi Indermühle are joining the San Francisco-based Del Sol String Quartet to present three concerts of music by Burkhard (1900–1955), one of the country's Big Three (along with Honegger and Martin). The schedule, all at 8 p.m.: October 9, Julia Morgan Center, Berkeley; October 11, Old St. Hilary's, Tiburon; October 13, Pacific Cultural Center, Santa Cruz.
Meanwhile, the Zürich Youth Orchestra is joining Leo Eyler's California Youth Orchestra at 8 p.m., Friday, October 13, in Palo Alto's Gunn High School. Eighteen-year-old Swiss cellist Anita Leuzinger, the winner of numerous awards there, will be the soloist in the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Zürich orchestra. A total of 170 young musicians join for works the orchestras perform together.
And the Russians too . . .
There is an "October Russian Festival" in San Francisco, it seems, extending even into the grand old (and free) Noontime Concerts series in the Bank of America Center's Giannini Auditorium (12:30 p.m., first and third Tuesdays of the month), and in St. Patrick's Church at Yerba Buena Gardens (every Wednesday at 12:30). Highlights: Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat and Suite Italienne on October 4; pianist Sarah Cahill playing Music for Machines, Soviet Constructivist-era music by Mosolov, Ornstein, and others. For information: www.noontimeconcerts.org.
The Chinese-Viennese Connection At its next concert, on October 16, in the acoustical horror of the War Memorial Building's Green Room, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble presents an intriguing combination of works by Brahms and Haydn, along with premieres of Chen Yi's Sound of the Five string quintet and Zhou Long's Spirit of Chimes piano trio.
A Gold Mine of Young Talent When the 24th annual Virtuoso Program Vivaldi concert begins in San Domenico School's Music Pavilion, at 3 p.m. on Sunday, October 22, it will feature teenagers who went from the tiny San Anselmo school to the youth orchestras of San Francisco and Oakland and then back again to play solo parts, soon to leave the school and join some major orchestras around the world. Faith France's remarkable program for string players (in a general-purpose high school yet!) has produced hundreds of SFS Youth Orchestra and Oakland Youth Orchestra members over the years, including many principal players and a concertmaster or two. Among the Vivaldi concert soloists this year, to be conducted by the Berkeley Symphony's George Thomson: Jannie Lo, 14; Sarah Aroner, Anjanine Bonet, Amari Joia Coombs, Juliette Javaheri, and Ann Lu, all 17; and Linda Staros, 18.
(Janos Gereben is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group and technology editor for www.the451.com.) ©2000 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved |