BEETHOVEN TIMES THREE

MAHLER 2000

MEMBERS' PARTY HIGHLIGHTS

INTRODUCING MARY ANN KEATING

CONCERT DATES FOR 2000-01

NEW MEMBERS

TIME TO RENEW FOR 2001

AND MORE!

OUR FIRST CONCERT: NOVEMBER 10 8:15 P.M.

PRE-CONCERT LECTURE: 7:30 P.M. MARSEE AUDITORIUM, EL CAMINO COLLEGE

Information: (310)-379-9725 (310)-539-4649

Although composed in 1803-4, the Triple Concerto was not publicly

performed until 1808. The work represents Beethoven's only sinfonia

concertante, a type of composition in which a small group of solo strings

is heard in alternation and combination with a larger orchestral body.

Beethoven's innovation within this form already explored by Mozart and

Haydn was to add a piano part suitable for one of his illustrious

Viennese pupils, the Archduke Rudolf, brother of the Emperor. Often

throughout the concerto the composition sounds like chamber music for

piano trio; however, the orchestral passages contribute an operatic chorus

to the arias and combined voices of the featured players. Their

interchanges remind us that Beethoven completed his only opera, Fidelio,

shortly after presenting the Triple Concerto to the Archduke.

VIOLINIST MARK ROBERTSON received his Bachelor's Degree from Boston

University and his Master's Degree from Juilliard. He served as

concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra many times, including their tour

of Japan in 1995, and made his New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall's

Weill Recital Hall. Now a Los Angeles resident, he is currently

concertmaster of the Culver City Chamber Orchestra and assistant

concertmaster of the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay. In addition to

live concerts, he is active in the Hollywood film and television recording

industry. His first chamber music CD is available on the MMC label.

PIANIST BRYAN PEZZONE is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where

he was awarded the Performers Certificate and won the concerto competition.

As a soloist, he has performed with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra,

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Pasadena Pops, Santa

Monica Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute

Orchestra, Eastman Philharmonic, and the Pacific Symphony. A consummate

crossover pianist, he excels in classical, contemporary, jazz, and

experimental genres. He has been on the piano faculty of the California

Institute of the Arts since 1987, where he created their multi-focused

keyboard program.

CELLIST ARMEN KSAJIKIAN, born in the former Soviet Union, made his solo

debut at the age of twelve with the Abkhazian State Philharmonic. Since

arriving in the United States in 1976, he has served as principal cellist

with the Pasadena, Pacific, Long Beach, Glendale, Hollywood Bowl,

New West, Opus, and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestras. He is a studio

musician, a member of the Armadillo String Quartet, and has appeared as

soloist with a number of symphony orchestras, including our own. In

January we heard his rendition of the Shostakovich First Cello Concerto,

Opus 107.

Gustav Mahler's musical reputation as we approach the true millennium

is a solid one. Once seldom found on orchestral schedules, the composer

has become an eminent presence who lends weight and respectability to any

concert year. To cite two local examples, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has

scheduled three Mahler symphonies during its upcoming season, and Joanne

Falletta will conduct the Resurrection Symphony for her farewell to Long

Beach next June. In keeping with its goal of community enrichment, the

Beach Cities Symphony will be presenting Mahler's First Symphony,

"The Titan," at its last concert of the year 2000 in tribute to this

complex, groundbreaking composer.

The label "Late Romantic" is frequently attached to Mahler. What does

the term mean? It sounds faintly pejorative, as though the composer and his

contemporaries just missed the train that carried Brahms, Mendelssohn,

Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner to immortality. In the best sense of the word,

Romanticism represents the rise of the individual against tyranny,

resulting in the freedom to express one's inner emotions in external forms

such as poetry, painting, and music. Late Romanticism encourages this same

self-expression but carries with it the disillusionment and decadence which

often result from unchecked self-expression and self-indulgence. In English

literature the nineteenth century is bracketed by the transcendent

compositions of William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy, in German music by the

transcendent symphonies of Beethoven and Mahler. Just as Hardy foreshadowed

the Age of Anxiety, so too Mahler foreshadowed the soul-searching we think

of as typically "modern." In his own words, he was composing not just

symphonies but rather "symphonic universes."

Music Director Barry Brisk attributes Mahler's neglect in the earlier

part of the twentieth century to his being banned in Reich-dominated

countries because of his Jewish ancestry and the "degenerate" nature of his

music. In 1960, Brisk notes, Leonard Bernstein highlighted the Mahler

symphonies to celebrate the composer's centenary and thus "almost

single handedly made the world pay attention" to one of Bernstein's personal

heroes. And Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun agrees that Bernstein's

recordings in the 1960s "became the epicenter of the Mahler revival, the

first compelling evidence that Mahler's famous prediction, 'My time will

come,' had been realized."

However, biographer Jonathan Carr disputes Bernstein's claim to credit

for Mahler's resurgence as a "myth fostered in part by the conductor."

Mahler had many disciples in Europe after his death, principally Willem

Mengelberg in Holland, and a long list of well-known conductors in America

including Serge Koussevitsky, Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, George Szell,

and William Steinberg. "The real reasons holding Mahler back from the

widest acceptance early on are so obvious they tend to be overlooked,"

continues Carr. "His music is very long . . . and it is very complicated."

Mahler's First Symphony is neither very long nor overly complicated.

Yet like his later compositions, it pulsates with the energy and wit of a

composer testing the limits of his society's expectations and tolerance.

Its premiere in January of 1889, as described by conductor Sir Georg Solti,

was "a disaster": the orchestra found it too difficult, the critics hated

it, the audience was baffled. Afterwards Mahler described how he walked

for days through the streets of Budapest with everybody avoiding him and

thinking him a madman. More than a century later we are neither offended

nor surprised by its juxtaposition of cuckoo calls, hunting horns, military

marches, peasant dances, and a familiar children's nursery canon ("Frere

Jacques") which becomes a sad little dirge played in a minor key. The full

brass fanfare of the final movement is exhilarating and life-affirming,

leading us into the year 2001.

Every year our Members' Party reaches new heights, so it came as no

surprise that this year's event took place on the second floor of a

clubhouse in Torrance. The surprise came when guests went out on the

balcony and looked down on several tennis matches in progress.

Entertainment indoors was provided by the Freeman Valley Wind Quintet,

which includes orchestra members Bob Peterson and Bill Malcolm. The food,

delicious as ever, was presided over by Margaret McWilliams, who provided

a steady stream of hot hors d'oeuvres to supplement the tempting table

spread. Host and hostess duties were handled gracefully by Don Lapedes,

Martin Wood, Yong Reuter, Eileen Lapedes, Mary Ann Keating, Genevieve

Kiser, AdaBelle Peterson, Ruth MacFarlane, and Donna Clarke. JoAnn Kamada

did an outstanding job of organizing the silent auction, which netted

$1,300 for the Symphony's general fund. Many thanks to those who

contributed and solicited items for the auction, and who worked so hard

to make this annual get-together a happy memory. Thanks also to the

West End Racquet Club for providing our most unusual venue to date.

Anne Lee Antletz

Bruce & Karen Beatty

Hakimeh Kadivar

Mr. & Mrs. H. L. Keating

Charles V. Lockhart

Robert S. Ramsay

George & Jeanie Pelzman

Michael & Sandra Sandor

Mr. & Mrs. R. D. Smith

Shirley Sommer

Paul Spinner

Barbara B. Stringer

Ellen & Chris Velline

THANKS TO ALL who filled out the survey sheets at our April

concert. Your opinions are very important to us in planning and

publicizing our concerts. We will be reporting on results in a

future issue of the newsletter.

You've probably noticed that our concerts are frequently scheduled

just before holiday weekends (Memorial Day), at the ends of holiday

weeks (Good Friday during the Easter season), or on the actual

holiday (Halloween, Veterans Day). We don t usually ask for these

dates; rather, we are offered a limited number of choices--and

sometimes no choice at all--after the South Bay Center for the Arts

schedules paid events in Marsee Auditorium. We hope you understand

and share our gratitude to El Camino for offering us the opportunity

to offer free concerts in this very desirable venue.

Our newest Board member, Mary Ann Keating, is already familiar to

Association members who attended our annual party on June 4. She is

also familiar to community members who read the local papers. Recently

retired from El Camino College, she served as Director of Public

Information for twenty-three years and as such was the official quoted

source for all news stories involving that institution.

Mary Ann joined the Symphony Association Board in April at the invitation

of Dr. Robert Haag, whom she met and worked with at El Camino. A music

lover, especially of opera, she attended her first Beach Cities Symphony

performance at Mira Costa High in the late '60s. She later rediscovered

the orchestra after it began appearing at El Camino's Marsee Auditorium.

As an audience member, she has always noticed how "The enthusiasm of the

[Beach Cities Symphony] musicians comes across. They are there because

they want to be, because of the love of music, not the paycheck." She also

finds the wide-ranging backgrounds of the Symphony and Board members to

be a positive factor: "It brings together people from all different walks

of life: teachers, engineers, designers, and so on, with the common

denominator of music."

Mary Ann, a native of Colorado Springs and a graduate of the University

of Missouri's School of Journalism, came to California in 1967 and has

lived in Redondo Beach ever since. She worked first for the Daily Breeze

and then for the Los Angeles Times after her husband-to-be, Hal, offered her a

job there. Her impressive background in journalism made her a natural mentor

for El Camino students interested in exploring the communications field

outside the newsroom. Mary Ann took a no-nonsense, hands-on approach in

indoctrinating her student helpers: "I would have them scrub out the floor

of the darkroom. That way I weeded out the serious ones." She still keeps

in touch with many former students who have gone on to careers with the

Times, the Breeze, and other papers.

"Active retirement" is a good way to describe Mary Ann's life at this

point. She and her husband will be traveling more; most recently they

went on a ten-day train excursion from Vancouver to Toronto, which she

will be describing for one of the several travel publications she writes

for. She recently became a docent at the Banning Residence Museum in

Wilmington and has applied for a post on the Redondo Beach Historical

Commission. It's our good fortune that she will be giving us some of

her time also. Her local newspaper contacts will be of great benefit as

she assists our Publicity Chair, JoAnn Kamada. Especially helpful to us

is her experience in working at El Camino and her knowledge of the way

the South Bay Center of the Arts functions. Mary Ann expresses pleasure

in being part of the Beach Cities Symphony and its community, noting that

"It fills a need for the fine arts that schools recently have not been

able to provide." The pleasure is ours as well.

November 10, 2000: Beethoven Triple Concerto, Mahler Symphony #1

January 19, 2001: Raikovich Happy Overture, Mozart Piano Concerto in G,

K. 453 , Brahms Symphony #2

April 13, 2001: Rimsky-Korsakov Russian Easter Overture, Wagner Good

Friday Spell, Dvorak Violin Concerto in A Minor

May 25, 2001: Copland An Outdoor Overture, Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody #2,

MTAC Artists of the Future Concerto Soloists

Please forward newsletter inquiries to: Beach Cities Symphony Assn.

Post Office Box 248 Redondo Beach CA 90277-0248

Concert/Member information line: 310-379-9725 or 310-539-4649

www.netword.com/bcso

Text: Toni Empringham

Graphics: Ralph Dame

Editor/Advisor: Margaret McWilliams

by renewing your membership in the Beach Cities Symphony Association

for the 2000-2001 concert season. The date above your name on the mailing

label now reflects the EXPIRATION of your current subscription. To keep

receiving the benefits of membership, which include this newsletter,

eligibility for prize drawings at our concerts, and an invitation to the

annual members party at the end of the concert year, use the enclosed

envelope to renew now. If you have already subscribed for the current

season--we thank you!

........................................................................

Angel $1,000 or more***Conductor's Circle $500***Sponsor $250

***Benefactor $150***Patron $100***Associate $50***Contributor $30

Enclosed find my check for $_______________to cover my membership in the

Beach Cities Symphony Association, Inc. for the 2000-01 season.

Please send me advance notice of concerts and receptions.

Name___________________________________________________________________

Phone_________________

Address______________________________________________________

_________________________________

City, State, Zip Code_________________________________________________

E-mail address (to receive reminders before each concert)_______________

Employer (for matching funds)___________________________________________

THANK YOU FOR YOUR DONATION

Mail to Beach Cities Symphony Assn., P. O. Box 248. Redondo Beach, CA 90277-0248.

For information call (310) 379-9725 or (310) 539-4649.