Symphonic Journeys: Strauss, Walton, Brahms

Come enjoy a pre-concert talk covering highlights and backstories of this program, one hour before concert-time.

Guest speaker for this weekend: Karen Koner, SDSU Associate Professor of Music Education.

For this classical music concert, purchased drinks should only be enjoyed in the lobbies pre-concert or during intermission, and should not be brought inside the concert hall.

For Jacobs Masterworks concerts, only children ages five years and older will be allowed into the concert hall. These children must have a ticket and be able to sit in an un-accompanied seat.

Composer William Walton and Principal Viola Chi-Yuan Chen

WILLIAM WALTON: VIOLA CONCERTO

Composed: 1929
Length: 25 minutes
Orchestration: solo viola, two flutes, oboe, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, harp, strings

William Walton left Oxford at 18 without taking a degree and – to the distress of his family – spent the 1920s living the life of a young bohemian. He moved in with the Sitwell family of poets, was taken care of by wealthy patrons, and enjoyed a comfortable life that included frequent vacation trips to the continent. Walton’s music from this period – the witty Facade and brash Portsmouth Point – reflects the glitter of the Jazz Age as well as an awareness of Schoenberg and Bartók.

And so the appearance at the end of that decade of the Viola Concerto, music of emotional depth and greatly refined technique, was all the more remarkable. Walton composed the concerto during the years 1928-9 for the English violist Lionel Tertis, but the premiere was given by Paul Hindemith in London on October 3, 1929, with the composer conducting. In all ways, the Viola Concerto spoke of a new course and a new maturity for the 27-year-old Walton. Lyric and expressive, it is in the unusual sequence of two moderately slow movements framing a quick central movement, and Walton deploys themes cyclically across the span of the concerto.

- Excerpted from program notes by Eric Bromberger

Points of Interest:

• The original version of Walton's Viola Concerto was composed in 1929, the same year as the opening of The Fox Theatre in San Diego, now Jacobs Music Center.
• In 1999, Chi-Yuan Chen was the first violist to ever win New England Conservatory's concerto competition. He won performing the Walton Viola Concerto.
• Chi-Yuan will be performing on a 445-year-old Gasparo da Salo viola, which used to belong to his teacher at New England Conservatory, James Dunham.
• The concerto’s original version is rarely performed live because of balance issues. However, the newly renovated Jacobs Music Center and the superb playing of the Orchestra resolves any balance issues. It will be just perfect!

Ace Parking has provided a DEDICATED JACOBS MUSIC CENTER PARKING PRE-PURCHASE PAGE for upcoming events at JMC.