September 1, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THE OREGON SYMPHONY IN OCTOBER:
THE CLASSICAL, POPS AND KIDS SERIES ALL BEGIN ANEW

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(PORTLAND, Ore.) – The Oregon Symphony’s 2009/10 concert season goes into high gear in October with the opening events of its Classical concert series – always one of the major highlights on Portland’s fall arts calendar – as well as the season’s first Pops and Kids series performances. Also this month: Portland’s first performance ever of American composer Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety,” and concerts featuring one of music’s most popular masterworks of all time, the Beethoven Fifth Symphony. Complete details follow:

 

SATURDAY-MONDAY, OCT. 3-5:
THE CLASSICAL CONCERT SEASON KICKS OFF WITH JON KIMURA PARKER

• When and Where: Three performances, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 3 and 4, and 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 5; Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

• The Performers: The Oregon Symphony, with Music Director Carlos Kalmar on the podium, joined by Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker.

• The Program:
• Johannes Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor
• Béla Bartók: Divertimento for String Orchestra
• Franz Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1 in F minor

• Tickets: $15 to $100; at the Oregon Symphony Ticket Office, 923 SW Washington St., in downtown Portland. Ticket office hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Tickets may also be purchased by phone at (503) 228-1353 or (800) 228-7343 during the same hours, at the concert hall box office starting two hours before the performance, or online at any time from the orchestra’s web site, OrSymphony.org.  

• What’s So Special About These Concerts:
• The guest soloist, Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker, is an established Portland audience favorite who has performed recitals for Portland Piano International almost annually in recent years. At these concerts, he rejoins the Oregon Symphony for the first time since 2000.
• The program features three works seldom heard here. Parker plays the majestic Brahms First Piano Concerto, which the Oregon Symphony last performed nearly a decade ago, in January 2000. The two pieces on the second half of the program are even rarer: Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings, one of the genuine masterpieces of 20th century music, was last performed here in 1970; Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1 hasn’t been done by the Oregon Symphony since 1937.
• The Oregon Symphony’s first Classical series concert each season is always among the top highlights of Portland’s fall arts calendar, and this year is no exception. David Stabler, classical music critic for The Oregonian, singled it out on his list of fall’s best musical events in Portland, calling it “a dynamite program.”

 

SATURDAY-SUNDAY, OCT. 10-11:
JEFF TYZIK’S SECOND POPS SEASON OPENS WITH THE GREAT GERSHWIN

• When and Where: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 11; Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. (NOTE: This concert will also be performed at 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 12, at Willamette University’s Smith Hall in Salem.)

• The Performers: The Oregon Symphony, with Principal Pops Conductor Jeff Tyzik on the podium, joined by pianist Jon Nakamatsu – the gold medalist in the 1997 Van Cliburn piano competition – and singer Doug LaBrecque.

• The Program:
• All Gershwin, all the time, including classic tunes from the Great American Songbook like “I Got Rhythm,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “Swanee,” as well as his two greatest symphonic masterworks, An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue.

• Tickets: FOR THE PORTLAND PERFORMANCES: $15 to $95; at the Oregon Symphony Ticket Office, 923 SW Washington St., in downtown Portland. Ticket office hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Tickets may also be purchased by phone at (503) 228-1353 or (800) 228-7343 during the same hours, at the concert hall box office starting two hours before the performance, or online at any time from the orchestra’s web site, OrSymphony.org.  

FOR THE SALEM PERFORMANCE: $26 to $54, available from TicketsWest.

• What’s So Special About These Concerts:
• Jeff Tyzik returns for his second season as the Oregon Symphony’s principal Pops conductor. He’s on the podium for all four of the orchestra’s Pops programs this season.
• Joining Tyzik are pianist Jon Nakamatsu, who performs Gershwin’s most popular composition – the iconic Rhapsody in Blue – and vocalist Doug LaBrecque, who wowed the Portland Pops crowd at last season’s Broadway-themed Pops concert.
• George Gershwin – one of America’s most prolific composers in the early decades of the 20th century – could do it all: jazz, classical, Broadway, film music. His death in 1937 from a brain tumor robbed music of one of its most formidable creative forces, and today many of his compositions are considered American classics.
• Media sponsor for Oregon Symphony Pops concerts is The Oregonian.

 

SATURDAY-MONDAY, OCT. 17-19:
PORTLAND’S FIRST PERFORMANCE OF BERNSTEIN’S “AGE OF ANXIETY”

• When and Where: Three performances, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Oct.  17 and 18, and 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 19; Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. (NOTE: This concert will also be performed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20, at Willamette University’s Smith Hall in Salem.)

• The Performers: The Oregon Symphony, with Music Director Carlos Kalmar on the podium, joined by guest pianist Kirill Gerstein.

• The Program:
• Johann Sebastian Bach: Suite No. 4 in D major
• Leonard Bernstein: Symphony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety”
• Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 7 in A major

• Tickets: FOR THE PORTLAND PERFORMANCES: $15 to $100; at the Oregon Symphony Ticket Office, 923 SW Washington St., in downtown Portland. Ticket office hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Tickets may also be purchased by phone at (503) 228-1353 or (800) 228-7343 during the same hours, at the concert hall box office starting two hours before the performance, or online at any time from the orchestra’s web site, OrSymphony.org.  

FOR THE SALEM PERFORMANCE: $25 to $43, available from TicketsWest.

• What’s So Special About These Concerts:
• One of the seldom-played Classical pieces by American composer Leonard Bernstein gets its first Oregon Symphony performance at these concerts.
• Bernstein’s work, Symphony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety,” is based on an epic-length poem of the same name by the English-American poet W.H. Auden. Bernstein called the poem, set in a New York City bar in wartime, “fascinating and hair-raising.” The poem won the Pulitzer Prize and, in addition to Bernstein’s symphony, also was the inspiration for a 1950 ballet by Jerome Robbins.
• Bernstein’s work may sound more like a piano concerto than a classic symphony to listeners because of the way it employs solo piano throughout. Russian-American pianist Kirill Gerstein, a frequent Oregon Symphony guest in recent seasons, is the soloist.
• The second half of the program features one of orchestral music’s perennial crowd-pleasers: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. The Seventh has been acclaimed by audiences virtually since its premiere performance in Vienna in 1813, which Beethoven himself conducted despite the fact that he was almost completely deaf. More recently, British composer and author Antony Hopkins wrote about it: “The notes seem to fly off the page as we are borne along on a floodtide of inspired invention.”   
• The presenting sponsor of these concerts is Integra Telecom.

 

SUNDAY, OCT. 25:
CREEPY CRITTERS INVADE THE PINK LEMONADE KIDS’ CONCERT SERIES

• When and Where: One performance only, at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25; Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

• The Performers: The Oregon Symphony, with Resident Conductor Gregory Vajda on the podium, joined by narrator Pam Mahon.

• The Program: A menagerie of familiar tunes all about insects and animals: “Beauty and the Beast” from Maurice Ravels Mother Goose Suite, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” and, of course, “La Cucaracha” among them.

• Tickets: $18 to $43; at the Oregon Symphony Ticket Office, 923 SW Washington St., in downtown Portland. Ticket office hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Tickets may also be purchased by phone at (503) 228-1353 or (800) 228-7343 during the same hours, at the concert hall box office starting two hours before the performance, or online at any time from the orchestra’s web site, OrSymphony.org.  

• What’s So Special About This Concert:
• It’s the week before Halloween, so the Oregon Symphony turns its attention to all things creepy and crawly for the season’s first Sunday afternoon Kids Concert.
• Kids Concerts are short performances – about an hour in length, without intermission – programmed specifically to appeal to young audiences and are an ideal way to introduce children to classical music.
• Local actress/singer Pam Mahon hosts all three concerts in the series, keeping things moving briskly along and making sure the young audience members are actively involved in what’s going on on-stage.
• The Oregon Symphony’s three-concert Kids series gets a new name this year: “Pink Lemonade.” All three concerts in the series are Sunday matinees. (Others coming up are a holiday concert Dec. 20 and a Valentine’s concert Feb. 14.)
• Presenting sponsor of this concert is The Standard.

 

SATURDAY-SUNDAY, OCT. 31-NOV. 1:
THE SINGULAR SYMPHONIC MASTERPIECE THAT IS BEETHOVEN’S FIFTH

• When and Where: Two performances, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31, and a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, Nov. 1; Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. (NOTE: This concert will also be performed at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 2, at Willamette University’s Smith Hall in Salem.)

• The Performers: The Oregon Symphony, led by guest conductor Claus Peter Flor, with 23-year-old violin phenom Stefan Jackiw as soloist.

• The Program:
• Maurice Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor

• Tickets: FOR THE PORTLAND PERFORMANCES: $15 to $100; at the Oregon Symphony Ticket Office, 923 SW Washington St., in downtown Portland. Ticket office hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Tickets may also be purchased by phone at (503) 228-1353 or (800) 228-7343 during the same hours, at the concert hall box office starting two hours before the performance, or online at any time from the orchestra’s web site, OrSymphony.org.  

FOR THE SALEM PERFORMANCE: $25 to $43, available from TicketsWest.

• What’s So Special About These Concerts:
• Among the highlights is a performance of one of the most popular works in the canon, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – perhaps the one Classical composition virtually everyone recognizes and the composition with the most famous first four notes in all of music: Da-da-da-dum!
• Little-known oddity: The Fifth got its premiere at an 1808 four-hour-long marathon concert in Vienna that featured nothing but Beethoven premieres. Also on that night’s program, Symphony No. 6 and Piano Concerto No. 4, with Beethoven himself at the piano.
• Balancing Beethoven on the program will be French composer Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin –a six-movement suite in which each part memorializes one of Ravel’s friends who died in World War I – and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4, written in 1775 when the Austrian wunderkind was not yet out of his teens.
• The soloist for the concerto, 23-year-old violin phenom Stefan Jackiw, is not much out of his teens himself. But he’s already a rising presence on the concert stage. The Seattle Times says of Jackiw: “This is a young star of astonishing gifts, whose musicality and technical finesse place him at the top of his peers.”
• Some sharp listeners may remember Jackiw’s last Oregon Symphony performance, five years ago in April 2004, when the then-18-year-old played Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto.  
• These concerts inaugurate the Oregon Symphony’s new Classical “C” series. In a break from tradition, the four-concert series features Sunday matinee performances of full-length Classical concerts for the first time.

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CONTACT:
Carl Herko
Vice President, Media & Public Relations
(503) 416-6347
cherko@orsymphony.org