Israeli soloist Pianka to play Barber’s Violin Concerto twice with TICO

By David Amos

SAN DIEGO–The 75 member Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra will present two programs of great variety and musical interest, on Sunday, March 27 at 3 p.m. at Temple Emanu-El, and Tuesday, March 29, 7:30 p.m. at the orchestra’s home, Tifereth Israel Synagogue.

Featured as soloist will be the distinguished, retired concertmaster of the Israel Philharmonic and Houston Symphony, violinist Uri Pianka.  He and I met in the middle 1980’s during the recording sessions in which I was conducting the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. For the San Diego concerts, Mr. Pianka will play one of the most beloved and beautiful works in the 20th Century violin literature, Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto Opus 14.

Taking the first prize at the Juilliard School annual violin competition, marked the graduation from that venerable institution where he studied under Ivan Galamian and Dorothy DeLay. After a year of teaching at Brandeis University, he returned to Israel to join the Israel Philharmonic, where he soon became its concertmaster.

Pianka has soloed with giants of the music world, such as Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, Claudio Abbado, Sir John Barbirolli, Charles Munch, and others. He has frequently performed as soloist with the Israel Philharmonic, including worldwide tours of the orchestra. He also guest soloed with orchestras such as the Frankfurt Radio, Baltimore Symphony, and Bergen Symphony. In 1987, Pianka became the concertmaster of the Houston Symphony, where he served most of his tenure under Christoph Eschenbach.

In 1969 he formed with his colleagues Jonathan Zak (piano) and Simca Heled (cello) the famed “Yuval Trio”; this ensemble has made a name for itself on five continents through their recordings for Deutsche Gramophon, CBS Masterworks, Centaur, and other labels, which have received worldwide acclaim. His latest recording was made with Timothy Hester at the piano in 2007 at the KUHF studios in Houston, and includes sonatas by Cesar Frank, and Mendelssohn, and selections by Fritz Kreisler.

The Barber Violin Concerto has an interesting history. It was commissioned in the spring of 1939 by the industrialist Samuel Felds to be played by Felds’ adopted son, who was a student at the Curtis School of Music. The young Iso Briselli received from Barber the completed work in two movements, and expressed his dissatisfaction that the music, as beautiful as it was, did not display enough technical fireworks to feature his virtuosic prowess. Barber returned to composing, and created a third movement that ironically, turned out to be too difficult for the young Briselli to play!

This back-and-forth drama continued, and finally, the concerto was premiered in 1941 by violinist Albert Spaulding with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy, to great public and critical acclaim.

The TICO Orchestra will also play music by Maurice Ravel, his Minuet Antique,a short piece originally composed for piano and later orchestrated by the composer, two -orchestral excerpts from Barber’s opera “Vanessa”, and Leos Janacek’s popular and brilliant Sinfonietta for Orchestra.

 Here is another interesting “rest of the story” that we find in classical music. Janacek lived to be 74 years old, but his most famous compositions were created in the last decade of his life. Outside Czechoslovakia he was hardly recognized as a great composer, more as a competent musician, hardly a star, but his operas were and are very popular in his native land. His style of composition is somewhat influenced by Twentieth Century music (he lived until 1928), but, curiously, he was born only 13 years after Dvorak!

The sonic showpiece, Sinfonietta, was composed when Janacek was 72 years old. It was originally conceived as a set of military fanfares intended to express “the contemporary free man, his spiritual beauty and joy, his strength, courage and determination to fight for victory.” It started when the composer heard a brass band, and it branched off from there into a five movement work, with its movements informally titled Fanfare, The Castle in Brno, The Queen’s Monastery, The Street Landing to the Castle, and The Town Hall. Very appropriately, the score calls for additional brass players to the regular orchestral complement, namely, nine more trumpets, two tenor tubas, and two bass trumpets.

This work has brilliance, humor, surprises, virtuosity, tenderness, structural freedom, a look back at Romanticism, a look forward to modernism, and certainly, no lack of creativity.

Temple Emanu-El (the March 27 concert ) is located at 6299 Capri Drive, San Diego, Ca., 92120. The phone is (619) 286 2555.

Tifereth Israel Synagogue, the venue for the March 29 concert is 6660 Cowles Mountain Blvd., San Diego Ca., 92119 For more information, directions, season brochures, season ticket packages, or reservations, call (619) 697 6001, or you can buy your tickets online at www.tiferethisrael.com/TICO.

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Amos is conductor of the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra in San Diego, and has guest conducted professional orchestras around the world.  He may be contacted at david.amos@sdjewishworld.com