By David Amos
SAN DIEGO–The 75-member Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra will present a concert with the distinguished violinist Uri Pianka on Tuesday, January 27, at 7:30 p.m., in the synagogue’s Cohen Social Hall. He will play Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major.
Who is Uri Pianka? He received the first prize at the Juilliard School of Music annual violin competition, where he studied with 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. He soloed with the Israel Philharmonic every year of his time with this great orchestra and he performed as part of his musical background under the batons of Bernstein, Mehta, Abbado, Barbirolli, Munch, and many others. In 1987 Pianka became the concertmaster of the Houston Symphony, from which he recently retired.
I met Uri Pianka in the early 1980’s, when I was conducting a series of recordings with the Israel Philharmonic in Tel Aviv, and he was the principal violin and concertmaster.
After attending a recent TICO concert, Eileen Wingard, musician and San Diego Jewish World music critic wrote, “TICO concerts are one of East San Diego’s special offerings. At a minimal cost, you can listen to a symphony orchestra up close and hear the enlightening introductions from its conductor”.
The orchestra will play two other selections: Antonin Dvorák’s Scherzo Cappricioso is a brilliant work, utilizing many orchestral colors and folk melodies of his native Bohemia. Peter I. Tchaikovsky’s tragic tone poem Francesca da Rimini is an orchestral tour-de-force, musically depicting the story from Dante’s Inferno. The music takes you from the opening somber sounds, to the restlessness one must certainly encounter when entering Hell, to the flames of fire and wind of the underworld, and then, to one of the composers most mesmerizing and inspired love melodies. It concludes with an emotional and clever combination of both opposing motifs in a blaze of glorious tragedy. You will recognize snippets from the composer’s ballets, and even a quote from the 1812 Overture .Very dramatic.
This concert will also be performed on Sunday, January 25 at 4 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church of Chula Vista, located at East H Street and Paseo Ranchero.
For more information on the concerts, individual or group prices (The Chula Vista concert is admission free), reservation, directions, or a season brochure, call 619 697 6001, or you can buy your tickets online at www.tiferethisrael.com/TICO.
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You may wish to pencil in your calendar the next set of concerts of the Tifereth Israel Orchestra., which will take place at Tifereth Israel on March 22, 24, and 26. They will feature the music of Ernest Bloch, the Swiss-American composer who is mostly recognized for bringing the Jewish spirit and traditions into the orchestral world. The first two concerts will present Bloch’s Concerto Symphonique for Piano and Orchestra, Concerto Grosso No. 2, and his beloved Violin Concerto. The soloists will be the Israeli pianist Zecharia Plavin, a virtuoso artist and Bloch scholar, and Lithuanian violinist Raimondas Butvila..
The third night will be a Monodrama, a theatrical piece on the life of Ernest Bloch, as written by Zecharia Plavin. It will be performed in English by an actor, with musical excerpts on violin and piano by our two musical guests.
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Amos is conductor of the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra (TICO). Your comment may be placed in the space provided below or sent directly to the author at david.amos@sdjewishworld.com