OFJ THIRD ORCHESTRA SEASON, 2015: HOLLYWOOD AND THE THREE B’s
The press conference given by Music Director Marco Parisotto and this week’s guest director and soloist, Dorian Wilson and Ivan Perez, respectively, on Monday afternoon, September 14th, 2015, left no doubt that we are prepared for an exciting season at the Teatro Degollado, beginning this weekend.
Returning in triumph from a three-concert series in Busan, South Korea (“Everything went marvelously well for us”, said Maestro Parisotto), the OFJ is already preparing to delight us with the first program in its third 2015 season, “ORCHESTRAL MUSIC IN HOLLYWOOD”.
On his first visit to Mexico, American guest conductor Dorian Wilson, born in California and raised in Hawaii, leads the OFJ in a program which features both original music and arrangements by prolific film composer John Williams, considered by Maestro Parisotto to be “a truly great composer in his genre”, and Maestro Wilson affirms that for him it is a “great pleasure to be doing John Williams’ music…if we imagine these movies…Schindler’s List…Star Wars….Jaws…without the music, they would be completely different.” He hopes that many young people will come to this week’s concerts, scheduled for Friday evening at 8:30 PM and Sunday afternoon at 12:30 PM, and he encourages children to come to the concerts in costume, dressed as their favorite Hollywood movie characters.
One of the pieces on the program, “Schindler’s List”, will feature as soloist the excellent Venezuelan violinist Ivan Perez. Mr. Perez contributed his talents to the OFJ as guest concertmaster during the Korean tour, and he continues in that position this week. He is impressed with our orchestra, saying that we perform at a very high level.
Monica Anguiano, the orchestra’s Artistic Coordinator, pointed out that “Schindler’s List” replaces “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” which was listed in earlier programs for this week’s concerts.
What of the rest of the programming for the orchestra’s third 2015 season? Maestro Parisotto mentioned that a large part of the season will be dedicated to opera, with two important productions planned for the month of November and some interesting concert programs which will bring us to that moment:
The season’s second program brings us face-to-face with history’s great “Three B’s”, Bach (according to Maestro Parisotto, “the father of all succeeding composers”), represented by his famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, arranged by Leopold Stokowski, Brahms by his hauntingly beautiful Third Symphony, and the great Beethoven by the work most of us think of first when we think about classical music, the iconic Fifth Symphony.
As we move ahead into October, we meet with an old friend—a rather young friend, actually, Jalisco’s pride and prodigy Daniela Liebman, who will perform the Chopin Second Piano Concerto as she returns to perform with the OFJ after a year of study with some of the world’s greatest pianists and pedagogues. On this program, the Orchestra also continues its year-long Tchaikovsky cycle in celebration of the 175th anniversary of the composer’s birth, with his Symphony No. 3 in D Major, nicknamed the “Polish”, under the capable baton of Guest Conductor Martin Pantaleev, who joins us from the Sofia Philharmonic.
Our next encounter is with pianist Sheng Cai and East German-born Guest Conductor Eckart Preu in a celebration of some of the twentieth century´s most stunning, less-often-performed gems: José Pablo Moncayo´s “Cumbres” (Summits), the Bartok Piano concerto no.1, featuring the brilliant, young, Chinese-born virtuoso, William Schuman’s “American Festival Overture” and, as the finale, the “Grand Canyon Suite” by Ferde Grofé, a composer we know better than we realize, as he arranged George Gershwin´s “Rhapsody in Blue” in the version we hear in today’s concert halls.
At this point, Jalisco’s opera-loving public will have its opportunity to enjoy several memorable performances of two of the best-loved works in the operatic repertoire, Verdi’s “Rigoletto” and Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly”.
Returning to the concert repertoire in early December, we will experience “For the Love of Mozart”, an all-Mozart program which promises to bring us many beloved melodies and introduce us to brilliant clarinetist Joaquin Valdepeñas, principal clarinet in the Toronto Symphony for the past 25 years.
The OFJ’s third 2015 orchestra season will be followed by various performances of the final work of the orchestra’s 2015 Tchaikovsky cycle, his “Nutcracker” ballet-- a favorite holiday tradition.