Philadelphia Orchestra concertmaster returns home to open orchestra season

David Kim, concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, will return to the city he considers home to kick off the University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra season. For the Thursday, Sept. 20 concert Mr. Kim will perform Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26, one of the most popular violin concertos.

The orchestra will also perform the Symphony No. 4 in E minor by Johannes Brahms.

At 3 Kim began playing violin and several years later began studying with famed pedagogue Dorothy DeLay. He and his mother would drive eight hours from the family’s home in Pennsylvania to New York for his lessons. When he was 8, the family moved to Columbia where his parents took jobs at USC. He and his mother flew to New York for lessons every other Saturday and a few years later Kim began making the trips on his own.

He quickly became known as Columbia’s musical wunderkind performing frequently around the city.

“The most important and meaningful years of my childhood were in Columbia,” said Kim who attended Caughman Road Elementary and Hopkins Middle schools. "I had a great social life and the warmest memories. I keep in touch with friends I had in the seventh and eighth grade."

Kim received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the Juilliard School and in 1986 was the only American violinist to win a prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition. After a decade working as a soloist with orchestras around the world, he joined the Philadelphia Orchestra as concertmaster in 1999. He continues to perform as soloist and also teaches internationally. He arrives in Columbia after two weeks of teaching and performing in Japan. He lives outside Philadelphia with his wife and two daughters.

When Donald Portnoy became Music Director of the USC Symphony Orchestra in 1986, “I immediately heard about this wonderful violinist who grew up here.” Kim was the soloist with the USC Symphony Orchestra for its first concert at the new Koger Center for the Arts in 1989. Since then he has returned every few years to perform with the orchestra, the last time in 2006.

“Every time he performs so many people come to see him and catch up,” Portnoy said.

Coming back to Columbia is always special.

“It’s so touching and means so much to me,” Kim said.

The Bruch is a perfect piece for a happy homecoming concert.

“The concerto is exciting, compact and accessible,” Kim says. “It’s tuneful, soulful and flashy.”

The concerto was completed in 1866 and considerably revised with the advice of violinist Joseph Joachim the following year. The first movement is unusual in that it is a prelude to the second movement.  The smooth march has a melody first taken by the flutes with the solo violin entering with a short cadenza. This repeats, serving as an introduction to the main portion of the movement which contains a strong first theme and a melodic and slower second theme. The orchestra flows into the second movement, connected by a single low note from the first violins.

The slow second movement is admired for its powerful melody, considered the heart of the concerto. The expansive themes presented by the violin are underscored by a constantly moving orchestra part, keeping the movement alive and helping it flow from one part to the next.

The final movement starts with a quiet but intense introduction that yields to the soloist's exuberant dance-like theme. The second subject is an example of Romantic lyricism, a slower melody cutting into the movement several times before the upbeat dance theme returns. The piece ends with a huge accelerando, leading to a fiery finish.

The concert will open with Brahms’ Symphony No. 4. Completed in 1885, Brahms referred to it humorously as "a few entr'actes and polkas which I happened to have lying about," but he was quite aware of what he had achieved in this work. His musicals friends and advisors didn’t like the symphony. They were especially put off by the final movement, written as a passacaglia that was seen as a throwback to the Baroque era. Eventually the austere and tragic symphony was judged to be the composer’s most modern work and a summing up of all he knew about composing for orchestra. It was also his final symphony.

The 2012 – 2013 season will be comprised of seven concerts – one more than in recent years – with no increase in season ticket prices. Among the soloists will be pianist and USC Associate Professor Marina Lomazov, rising violin star Zeyu Victor Li and the Brasil Guitar Duo, along with a Tribute to Richard Wagner on the 200th anniversary of his birth and a night of tunes from the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein musicals.

For the full season visit http://www.music.sc.edu/ea/orchestra/

USC Symphony Orchestra, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 20. Koger Center for the Arts, Assembly and Greene streets, Columbia. Season tickets are $115 for the general public, $85 for USC faculty and staff and seniors, and $42 for students. Individual tickets are $25, $20 for seniors and USC faculty and staff, $8 for students. Call (803) 251-2222, go to http://capitoltickets.com/ or download a subscription form at http://www.music.sc.edu/ea/orchestra/schedule.html

Orchestra’s 2012 – 2013 season promises variety and excitement

The University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra brings back old friends and introduces new ones in what promises to be one of its most dynamic and diverse seasons ever.

The season starts with the orchestra and Columbia welcoming home Philadelphia Orchestra concertmaster David Kim, who grew up in Columbia. Other featured artists are Marina Lomazov, the area’s most beloved pianist, a 15-year-old violin virtuoso and a Brazilian guitar duo. The orchestra will celebrate the music of Richard Wagner on the 200^th anniversary of the composer’s birth and showcase the musical theater gems of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Among the composers in the spotlight are Brahms, Bruch, Nielsen, Grieg, Copland and Tchaikovsky.

“This is an exciting season,” said Dr. Donald Portnoy, Music Director of the orchestra. “We’re pleased to be able to offer such a great variety of great music with soloists of a caliber one rarely sees with a university orchestra.”

The upcoming season has seven concerts (up from six), but the price for a season subscription remains the same– only $115 for the general public with discounts for USC employees and seniors.

The season opens Sept. 20 with David Kim performing the Violin Concerto by Max Bruch. Philadelphia Orchestra concertmaster since 1999, Mr. Kim began studying with the famed pedagogue Dorothy DeLay at the age of eight. When his family moved to Columbia two years later he began commuting to New York alone to continue his studies. Mr. Kim has recently performed the Saint-Saens Concerto No. 3, all the violin solos from the complete Brandenburg Concertos with The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Vivaldi Four Seasons as conductor and soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia in Philadelphia and Beijing.

Clarinet player Alexander Fiterstein, winner of a 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant Award, will make his first appearance with the orchestra Oct. 16 performing Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto as well as several klezmer-inspired pieces written specifically for him. He has been soloist with orchestras in Venezuela, China, Denmark, Israel, Korea and Japan and at venues including the National Gallery of Art, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie’s Weill Hall and the Louvre in Paris. As a chamber musician he has performed with Daniel Barenboim, Emanuel Ax and Pinchas Zukerman. Mr. Fiterstein was a member of the prestigious Chamber Music Society II of Lincoln Center from 2004 to 2006 and continues to perform with the Society.

He also has a Columbia and USC connection; he is married to violinist Meira Silverstein, who grew up in Columbia and studied with Dr. Portnoy.

The vibrant and popular pianist Marina Lomazov will perform Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, op. 16 for the Nov. 13 concert. Dr. Lomazov, an associate professor at USC and Artistic Director of the Southeastern Piano Festival, has performed in nearly all of the 50 states, South America, China, Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia and Japan.

A giant of the classical music world – Richard Wagner – will be honored at the Jan. 27 concert. The orchestra will perform Prelude to Act III from Lohengrin, “Siegfried Idyll,” Prelude and “Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde and “Ride of the Valkyries” from The Ring of the Nibelung.

The orchestra celebrates Valentine’s Day with songs from the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein musicals Carousel, The King and I, Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, South Pacific and State Fair Feb. 12.

A rising star in the classical music world joins the orchestra March 26 for the Violin Concerto in D Major by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Zeyu Victor Li, 15, has gained widespread attention for his magnificent feel for the music as well as his technique. The Chinese musician was a semi-finalist in the 2012 Yehudi Menuhin Young Violinists International Competition.

The season wraps up April 25 with the springtime sounds of Brasil Guitar Duo. João Luiz and Douglas Lora met in their native São Paulo, Brazil as teenage guitar students and have been performing together for 15 years. With the Philharmonic they will perform Concerto for Two Guitars and Orchestra written for them by Brazilian composer Paulo Bellinati.

All concerts take place at 7:30 p.m. at the Koger Center for the Arts, 1015 Greene St. (Assembly and Greene streets) in Columbia. Season tickets are $115 for the general public, $85 for USC faculty and staff and seniors, and $42 for students. Call (803) 251-2222, go to capitoltickets.com or download a subscription form at http://www.music.sc.edu/ea/orchestra/schedule.html

USC Symphony Orchestra 2012 – 2013 Season

Thursday, Sept. 20
Johannes Brahms               Symphony No. 4 in E minor, op. 98
Max Bruch                             Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, op. 26
David Kim, violin

Tuesday, Oct. 16
Carl Nielsen                          Clarinet Concerto, op. 57
Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet
Aaron Copland                     Billy the Kid: Suite
Emmanuel Chabrier            España

Tuesday, Nov. 13
Ludwig Van Beethoven      Overture to Prometheus
Richard Strauss                   Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration)
Edvard Grieg             Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 16
Marina Lomazov, piano

Sunday, January 27
Richard Wagner                   Prelude to Act III from Lohengrin,  “Siegfried Idyll,” Prelude and “Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde, “Ride of the Valkyries” from The Ring of the Nibelung
Performances by winners of the USC Concerto–Aria Competition.

Tuesday, Feb. 12
An Evening of Rodgers and Hammerstein Classics
Music from Carousel, State Fair, The King and I, South Pacific, Sound of Music, and Oklahoma featuring Tina Milhorn Stallard (soprano), Janet Hopkins (mezzo-soprano), Walter Cuttino, (tenor), Jacob Will (bass-baritone), and chorus.  Original Broadway orchestrations of Robert Russell Bennett and Don Walker.

Tuesday, March 26
Howard Hanson                   Symphony No. 2, op. 30 (Romantic)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky     Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 35
Zeyu Victor Li, violin

Thursday, April 25
Bedrich Smetana                 Moldau
Paulo Bellinati                      Concerto for Two Guitars
Brasil Guitar Duo
Ottorino Respighi                Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome)

The University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra season ends with an extraordinary production: Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin.

 The multi-media concert/drama April 15 tells the story of Jewish prisoners who memorized and performed Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem at Terezin, a Jewish ghetto and prison during World War II.

Defiant Requiem combines Verdi's magnificent music with testimony from survivors of the original chorus, a propaganda film about the camp, and actors speaking the words of prisoners about their experience. Edgar Krasa, who was a chorus member at Terezin, will give a pre-concert talk.

The USC Symphony Orchestra concert will be the first time the work has been performed in the Southeast. Defiant Requiem, created by conductor Murry Sidlin, has been performed only 13 times previously including at Terezin and the Kennedy Center. Sidlin will conduct the performance by the USC Symphony Orchestra and the USC Concert Choir, USC Chorus, the York County Choral Society, Mars Hill College Chamber Singers and soloists Tina Stallard, Janet Hopkins, Walter Cuttino and Jacob Will.

The 7:30 p.m. event will take place at the Koger Center for the Arts. Krasa’s talk will be at 6:30 p.m. at the center.

Sidlin first came across the remarkable story of Verdi at Terezin in the late 1990s.

"I was walking down a street past a bookstore that had a sale rack outside,” he said. “I reached in and pulled out a book called Music in Terezin. It was like being struck by lightning.”

"This is my personal mission," said Sidlin, who is on the conducting faculty of the School of Music at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and former dean of the school.

Located in what is now the Czech Republic, Terezin (also known as Theresienstadt) was presented by the Nazis as a model Jewish settlement. In fact about 60,000 residents died from starvation and illness and another 88,000 were deported to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.

Many well-educated people including a number of prominent artists were sent to Terezin where they organized orchestras, chamber and jazz ensembles, theater groups and art classes. One was conductor Rafael Schächter, who formed a 200-member strong chorus. With a single smuggled score of Verdi’s Requiem, committed to memory by the prisoners, the chorus performed the famous oratorio 16 times, including once before SS officials and a Red Cross delegation.

Schächter told the choir, “We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them.” A few weeks after the final performance, he died in transit to Auschwitz.

Defiant Requiem has had a profound impact on those who have heard and seen it since it was first staged in 2002.

“The Requiem itself is almost unbearably powerful on its own -  a searing tone poem about the end of the world, operatic in scope and run through with celestial melodies and cascades of fire and brimstone,” wrote Stephen Brooks in The Washington Post. “But Sidlin's setting of the music, incorporating film of the camp, interviews with survivors, and actors describing the dramatic background, was handled with both dignity and power, and pushed the requiem to even more harrowing depths and exalting heights...”

Defiant Requiem is part of A Week of Remembrance: A Celebration of Jewish Culture, April 15-21 in partnership with the Opera-tunity Foundation and the USC School of Music.

Season tickets for the 2012 – 2013 USC Symphony Orchestra season will be available before and after the concert.

Individual tickets $25; $20 for seniors and USC faculty and staff; $8 for students. All performances take place at the Koger Center for the Arts, Assembly and Greene streets, Columbia. For more information and to purchase tickets call (803) 251-2222 or go to http://www.capitoltickets.com

Student musicians in the spotlight at next USC Symphony Orchestra concert

See tomorrow’s musical leaders in action as outstanding students of the University of South Carolina School of Music shine in the next USC Symphony Orchestra concert. The first half of the March 13 concert showcases winners of the orchestra’s concerto-aria competition and student conductors performing works spanning four centuries by Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms and Ibert.

After intermission orchestra music director Donald Portnoy will conduct Bizet’s Symphony in C.

Students in the spotlight are from around the U.S. as well as South America and Asia.

Nové Deypalan

The concert opens with “Overture to Egmont” written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1810. Conducting will be Nove Deypalan who in February conducted the world premiere of “Dream of a Hundred Flowers” by Fang Man at Carnegie Hall. Deypalan, a native of the Philippines, studied at the University of the Philippines College of Music and was composer and conductor at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.  A doctoral student in conducting, Deypalan holds a master’s degree from the University of Southern California.

The work was a commission for a production of Goethe’s tragedy “Egmont.” The composer waived his fee “merely for love of the poet.”

Blair Francis

Paula Anne Ulicsni will conduct the third movement of the Concerto for Flute and Orchestra by Jacques Ibert, with soloist Blair Francis. Francis, principal flutist of the orchestra, is a senior performance major and the 2011 Presser Scholar.  She has been an award winner in the Florida Flute Association College Young Artist Competition, the South Carolina Flute Society’s Young Artist Competition and the National Flute Association Masterclass Performers Competition.

Paula Anne Ulicsni

Ulicsni is pursuing a master’s degree in instrumental conducting. She has been assistant conductor of Opera at USC, participated in the 2010 and 2011 Conductors Institute of South Carolina and conducted for in the 2010 concerto-aria Competition concert. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota Duluth.

The third movement of the 1934 concerto immediately became a test piece at the Paris Conservatory, in part due to its difficulty; for the same reason 20 years passed before it became a frequent concert choice.

Robert Brown conducts Franz Joseph Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major, first movement, with soloist Oswaldo Zapata.

Oswaldo Zapata

Zapata is from Colombia, South America, where he earned a music performance degree from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. In 2000 he began studying in his native country with James Ackley, who is now on the School of Music faculty, and in 2008 he came to USC to continue working with Ackley. Zapata is pursuing a master’s degree in music performance.

Robert Brown

Brown, a master’s degree student in orchestral conducting, received a bachelor’s degree from Moravian College in Pennsylvania where he performed in various ensembles as a saxophonist, served as student director for the Moravian College BIG Band and organized and conducted a full performance of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale.”

The Trumpet Concerto, written in 1796, is the one of the first important works written for the recently-invented keyed trumpet.

Yi Yang

Yi Yang will lead the orchestra and Ying-Li Pan will be soloist for the first movement of the Violin Concerto in D Major by Johannes Brahms. Yi Yang studied conducting at the Central Conservatory of Music in China, and has conducted at the National Centre for the Performing Arts and the Central Conservatory. Yi Yang won First Prize at the Conducting Competition and Best Conductor Prize at the Beijing International Band Festival and the China High-Class Amateur Band Festival.

Ying-Li Pan

A native of Taiwan, Ying-Li Pan is pursuing her master’s degree in performance. She holds the positions of concertmaster with the USC Chamber Orchestra and associate concertmaster with the Symphony Orchestra. A graduate of National Taiwan Normal University, she toured with the Normal University Symphony Orchestra and Asia Youth Orchestra throughout Asia, Australia and the U.S.

The 1878 work is the only violin concerto by the composer. He wrote the work for his lifelong friend violinist Joseph Joachim.

Donald Portnoy

Maestro Portnoy will take the podium to conduct Georges Bizet’s Symphony in C. Bizet wrote the symphony, his only one, when he was 17. The Symphony in C was not discovered until decades after the composer’s death in 1875, with its first performance given in 1935.

The USC Symphony Orchestra, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 13. Koger Center for the Arts. Tickets are $25; $20 for USC faculty and staff and seniors, $8 for students. Call (803) 251-2222 or go to capitoltickets.com

(To arrange interviews with any of the participants, please contact the USC Symphony Orchestra at 803-777-7500.)