Nova Vista Program Notes

Proudly introducing...

Navroj Mehta, Guest Conductor

Navroj Mehta is the first of the four guest conductors who will be directing the Nova Vista this season, chosen from a field of 85 applicants. At the season's close, orchestra members will select one of the four as permanent director.

As outreach conductor with the San Diego Symphony, Mehta has been hailed as "Dynamic, Charming and informative." Music Director of the Alcala Park Symphony from 1993-1996 and Director of the V.O.S.A. Chamber Music Series in San Diego, he has been acclaimed for his audience rapport and his ability to open doors into the world of classical music. Other conducting affiliations have included the Knoxville Symphony, and the San Diego Chamber Orchestra. As guest conductor, Mehta has appeared with many orchestras in this country and abroad. He also performs regularly as violin soloist, expanding the repertoire of concerti conducted from the violin. Mehta's passion for music education carries him into classrooms across the country. He is a regular guest lecturer at the University of San Diego, and heads up the San Diego Chamber Orchestra's In-Schools concerts.

Mehta began violin studies at the age of six. Attending Indiana University as a student of the famed Josef Gingold, he continued his violin studies at The Juilliard School with Szymon Goldberg and in the master classes of Nathan Milstein. At Juilliard, Mehta became interested in conducting, and became a student of Otto Werner Mueller, continuing his studies after graduation with Charles Bruck.

Brinton Averil Smith, Cello Soloist

Hailed by New York Newsday for "Extraordinary musicianship… forceful, sophisticated and entirely in the spirit of the music," cellist Brinton Averil Smith's North American engagements have included numerous performances in such venues as the Lincoln Center in New York and the Aspen Music Festival, as well as recent recital appearances in Dallas, Phoenix, San Diego, Tucson, and Los Angeles in addition to appearances in Europe and Africa.

Mr. Smith was recently chosen to record the Rozsa Cello Concerto with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. The recording was released to international critical acclaim including the 1998 Gramophone Awards Issue which praised him as a "hugely eloquent, impassioned soloist".

In addition to his present post as the principal cellist of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Smith was recently appointed as an Artist-in-Residence at the Texas Christian University School of Music. He also previously served as principal cellist of the San Diego Symphony and the San Diego Chamber Orchestra.

VARIATIONS ON A ROCOCO THEME and PEZZO CAPRICCIOSO

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1849 - 1893)

"Do you know that when I play Mozart, I feel brighter and younger - almost a youth?" wrote Tchaikovsky. Always a devoted admirer of Mozart although he developed his own distinctive style, Tchaikovsky paid tribute to the master with a piece that suggested the Mozart style, entitled Variations on a Rococo Theme, using the 18th century term for a highly ornamental period in architecture and art. Elegant and graceful, the piece employs the light dance rhythms of the rococo period. It was dedicated to Wilhelm Karl Friedrich Fitzenhagen, a noted German cellist. At the premiere of the work with Fitzenhagen performing, Liszt was in the audience and is reported to have exclaimed, "This is indeed music." While the Italian "Pezzo Capriccioso" translates roughly into a rather generic "whimsical piece", and it is often overshadowed by the earlier Variations, it actually provides the soloist for ample opportunity to display both emotional expression and virtuosity.

THE HEBRIDES (Fingal's Cave)

Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847)

"We were put out into boats and clambered past the hissing sea on stumps of columns up to the odiously celebrated Fingal's Cave," reports a fellow-traveler of Mendelssohn during a summer trip to the Hebrides in Scotland. "The many pillars make the inside resemble a monstrous organ. Black, resounding, and utterly without any purpose at all, it lies there, the broad gray sea inside it and in front of it."

Upon touching stable land after a miserable steamer trip, Mendelssohn forgot his woes as he stood in awe at the cave's entrance, 65 feet high and 50 feet wide. His first impression of the "cave of melody", as its Gaelic name translates, touched him so deeply that on the spot he created two bars of music which he put on paper, fully orchestrated, in his next letter home. The two bars became the prevailing theme that permeates the score which became The Hebrides overture, subtitled Fingal's Cave.

Sir Walter Scott and Sir Robert Peel both described in poetry their reactions to the impressive cavern, dwelling on the musical sounds of nature. Mendelssohn translated his impression into a work of remarkable richness and color that conveys the mysterious grandeur of the cave and the restless rhythm of the ocean, as well as the sounds of the sea birds. His masterful tone-painting has been praised a one of the finest musical sea-pictures ever written. Mendelssohn even captured the mood of the weather, a grey drizzle over the isolated and barren landscape. It led one biographer to wonder, "What would Fingal's Cave have sounded like had the sun been shining that day in July so long ago?"

SYMPHONY NO. 9 "From the New World"

When Czech composer Dvorák arrived in America to begin his commissioned task of developing an American school of composition, American life bewildered him. He wrote that American "push" annoyed him terribly in the beginning (and this was a hundred years ago!) but "now I like it; I have come to the conclusion that this youthful enthusiasm and eagerness to take up everything is the best promise for music in America."

While he explored spirituals and plantation songs, Indian chants, Creole songs, and other indigenous music, he made it definitely known that he did not "borrow" melodies or themes, but incorporated elements of native melodies in his own original music which remained firmly Bohemian in character.

Whether the music recalls familiar themes or the themes became familiar through the symphony's popularity, it remains one of the best-loved and oft-played works in classical repertoire. It is romantic, lyrical, sensitive, and full of infectious rhythms.

In connection with his commission, Dvorák was a judge for a nationwide music-writing contest during which he examined a great many works by American composers. "They are all brought up in the German school," he concluded sadly. "Still here and there another spirit, a fresh thought, a new coloring flashes through."

One wonders how he would have regarded the "other spirit, fresh thought, new coloring" that brought the audience to its feet cheering at the premiere of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" some 30 years later?

PROGRAM NOTES IN ADVANCE

Do you like to read the notes in the program at the concert but sometimes don't have the time, opportunity, or good light? Get them in advance by e-mail. Send your request to NovaVista@juno.com.

The Nova Vista Symphony is co-sponsored by the City of Sunnyvale Parks and Recreation Department and the Arts Council Silicon Valley and is a member of the Foothill College Performing Arts Alliance.