Picture Perfect

Sound

THE NEW SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY season brochure dazzles, with dozens of photographs of famous performers about to come our way: violinists Pinchas Zukerman and Gil Shaham, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, pianist Jonathan Biss, conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, the Georgian State Dance Company, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. The friendly SDS marketing folks would like to make things easy for us. Simply pick one or more of the following: Jacobs’ Masterworks Series, Winter Pops Series, Family Festival Series or Symphony Exposed——a new series of four concerts in which popular lecturer Nuvi Mehta expresses his credo that “Music tells a story.”

The Jacobs Series comes in three flavors: Aficionado (12 concerts), Allegro/Rhapsody (six) and Build-Your-Own (six). In all, there are approximately 32 musical programs available on about 66 dates, October 5 through May 18. To sort it all out, it’s best to visit sandiegosymphony.com or call 619-235-0804.

Some offerings don’t fit into any of the regular series packages: an Opus 2007 Gala opener (at Qualcomm Hall in Sorrento Mesa, October 6) that will set you back either $1,000 or $150 (yes, those are the choices), a not-to-be-missed visit from Britain’s Royal Philharmonic (January 24)——a remarkable concert in which our own orchestra is going to take part——and a $30 Silent Film Night (February 15 and 16).

I have invented two packages of my own: the Totally Awesome for Newbies Series and the Goose the Jaded Appetite Series.

I nostalgically recall being a newbie. I first heard Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on an old phonograph I’d lugged down to my grandmother’s apartment at Windansea Beach. Just a kid, I’d saved up my allowance to buy the Arturo Toscanini album (two black vinyl LPs) and was shocked to discover the famous choral bit comes only in the last movement. But then I heard the piece live! It was Robert Shaw conducting the San Diego Symphony in Balboa Park’s Starlight Bowl. I snuck all the way down into the front row, where, much to the disgust of all the grownups around me, I reacted wildly to every note in a classical version of shake, rattle and roll.

Attention, thrill-seeking newbies: Do not miss Shaham as soloist in the Brahms Violin Concerto (October 5 and 7), the nearly psychedelic Symphonie Fantastique (October 26-28), Schubert’s haunting and dramatic Unfinished Symphony No. 8 (November 16 and 17) and, of course, symphony artistic director Jahja Ling leading the San Diego Master Chorale and soloists in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (December 7-9). Then there’s the Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition (January 10-13), Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (February 8-10), Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky (February 29, March 1 and 2) and Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (March 27 and 29).

There’s plenty for the jaded listener, too: Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 (November 2 and 3), soloist Jeffrey Biegel in Lowell Liebermann’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (February 8-10) and Jennifer Hidgon’s Blue Cathedral (March 7-9). Daniel Kellogg’s The Fiery Furnace receives its world premiere here (April 25-27), with Ling, soprano soloist Nicole Cabell and the San Diego Master Chorale.

“The work I look forward to most is Mahler’s Symphony No. 3,” says Ling. “Unlike his later symphonies, which were preoccupied with fear of death and the complexity of his emotions, it expresses hope and love——for nature, animal, man, angel and God. The last movement represents his most profound writing, which utilizes every section of the orchestra.”

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to San Diego Magazine »