To experience a concert of La Jolla Symphony & Chorus (LJS&C) is to go on a trip. Usually, one encounters the unknown, juxtaposed with the familiar and not so familiar. The stirring experience leaves one a bit awed and a lot inspired.
“So it goes,” heard the afternoon of Sunday, Feb. 10, was no exception. The familiar was Hector Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, Opus 12, which utilized the considerable orchestral forces at hand. The not so familiar was Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Opus 19, played by San Diego native Pasha Tseitlin, 21, a junior at University of Southern California. Winner of last season’s LJS&C Young Artists Competition, he has recorded two CDs with CAMUS. See the delightful, handsome lad and hear his extraordinary playing at http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=42089811
The unknown, and perhaps the most exciting part of the journey, was Ingram Marshall’s “Kingdom Come.” Marshall (b. 1942) is currently a visiting teacher in composition at Yale University, but he would be the first to tell you he is not an academic.
Talk about travel, Marshall is a lifelong sojourner who takes the opportunity to acquaint himself with native music and instruments where ever he goes. For instance, he went to Bali in 1971 and immersed himself in Javanese and Balinese modes of traditional gamelan music, which first intrigued him when he was a student of Morton Subotnick at California Institute of the Arts, where he went to study electronic music.
The three electronic components of “Kingdom Come” are recordings he made and beautifully processed. Then he composed the amazingly moving music that surrounds the samplings, the whole dedicated to the memory of his brother-in-law, an American journalist who died in Bosnia in 1995.
The tape samples were recorded “a number of years ago” in Yugoslavia. The electronics consist of a hymn-singing in a Croatian Catholic Church; a fragment of a Serbian Orthodox service replete with priest, female cantor and bells; and an old recording of a Bosnian Muslim “gusle” epic singer.
Tseitlin is a graceful, slip of a lad, gangly, poised and unflappable. He displayed beautiful tone in the first movement’s solo interplay with the other strings. His command of the instrument is most impressive from rapid harmonics to lyrical, impressionistic passages, the work’s extraordinary dying away, played entirely without vibrato.
Berlioz rattled the Mandeville rafters and sent the capacity crowd home with filled ears and satisfied, adventurers’ curiosity.
Next for LJS&C: A March 15-16 program comprising Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 6, Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Andante for Strings, and Chinary Ung’s Inner Voices.
For information visit www.lajollasymphony.com or call (858) 534-4637.