Season Opener Concert
Join Maestro Eylar as he inaugurates the 68th season of the California Youth Symphony and celebrates his 30th year as Music Director of our internationally recognized and award-winning organization. Maestro Eylar has chosen a dazzling opening program featuring virtuoso works for orchestra from the Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary periods. Our Young Artist Competition winner Solomon Ge will perform Beethoven’s sparkling Piano Concerto no. 1, composed two years after Beethoven’s arrival in Vienna to study with Haydn. It is a work of astonishing virtuosity and was first performed with the composer as soloist in 1795 when he was at the height of his pianistic prowess. Our opener for this concert is Richard Strauss’s Don Juan, often considered to be perhaps the most brilliantly orchestrated and technically demanding of the famous eight “tone poems” for orchestra written by Strauss. Composed at the age of 24, this astonishing work took the music world by storm after its premiere performance in 1889 and launched the international reputation of Strauss as the most progressive living composer at the time. We round out our concert with a perennial favorite: Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. West Side Story was an instant hit on Broadway, running for 772 performances when it was first produced in 1957. The movie version (1961) was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won 10, becoming the record holder for the most wins for a musical. Bernstein fashioned a purely orchestral version of many of the highlights (also first performed in 1961) which has become one of the most popular and beloved of the composer’s works. You won’t want to miss such favorites as "Somewhere", "Mambo", "Cool Fugue", "Rumble", and other highly jazz-inflected and unforgettable hit tunes from this iconic American work!
Leo Eylar, conductor
Solomon Ge, piano
Strauss: Don Juan
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Solomon Ge, piano)
Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Young Artist Competition Winner
Solomon Ge, age 16, is a pianist and composer from San Jose, CA. He currently studies piano with Prof. Yoshikazu Nagai at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music...
CYS Young Artist Competition
Each spring the California Youth Symphony holds its Young Artist Competition to select soloists for the following season. The Competition is open to pianists and instrumental soloists under age 19. Two young artists will be chosen by a panel of three judges to perform with the CYS Orchestra during the November or March concert series of the following season.
Application form becomes available in January!
