Spring Concert 2025
CYS returns to Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley on March 30th with the Senior Orchestra performing a stellar program that features the world premiere orchestral performance of Ukrainian composer Sergei Golovko’s Colombian Marimba Concerto. We are thrilled and honored to present this magnificent work, which will be performed by CYS’s own Apple Gao, winner of the Young Artist Competition for the 2024-25 CYS Season. The Colombian Concerto takes us on a Latin American voyage complete with drum set, electric guitar, jazz piano, as well as the supremely virtuosic solo marimba as they make use of Latin American dances, rhythms, harmonies, and melodies. It is a work that is guaranteed to please everyone! The orchestra will be featured in works by Ravel, Respighi, and Carlos Simon as well.
Ravel’s La Valse, composed in 1919-20, originated as a work intended to pay tribute to the “Waltz King”, Johann Strauss II. After serving in the French army in World War I, Ravel was asked to write a ballet for Serge Diaghilev based on such a work, which by this time had changed into an orchestral tone poem called Wien (Vienna). The commission never came through, but the finished work turned out to be one of Ravel’s most powerful compositions: a veritable danse macabre and orchestral tour-de-force that, according to composer George Benjamin, “plots the birth, decay, and destruction of a musical genre: the waltz.”
American composer Carlos Simon (b. 1986) is the composer in residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Inaugural Composer Chair for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Associate Professor at Georgetown University. Simon's music reflects his deep interest in social justice issues, often weaving activist themes into his compositions. His Fate Now Conquers was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and was composed in 2020. The piece was inspired by a journal entry from Ludwig van Beethoven’s notebook written in 1815: “Iliad. The Twenty-Second Book. But Fate now conquers; I am hers; and yet not she shall share in my renown; that life is left to every noble spirit, and that some great deed shall beget that all lives shall inherit.” The composer states: “We know that Beethoven strived to overcome many obstacles in his life and documented his aspirations to prevail, despite his ailments. Whatever the specific reason for including this particularly profound passage from The Iliad, in the end, it seems that Beethoven relinquished to fate. Fate now conquers.” The work is a short but powerful statement centered around Beethoven’s favorite minor key: C Minor, and references several Beethovinian rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic features.
We are also pleased to feature our CYS percussion section, directed by CYS Percussion Director Artie Storch, as they perform Daughtrey’s Rhyme or Reason, and our program will conclude with Ottorino Respighi’s gargantuan Fest Romane (Roman Festivals), the final work in his Roman triptych (Fountains of Rome, Pines of Rome, Roman Festivals), completed in 1928. Each movement portrays a vibrant scene of celebration in both ancient and modern Rome, including gladiatorial combat, the Christian Jubilee, a harvest and hunting festival, and a festive gathering in Piazza Navona. Among Respighi's Roman trilogy, this composition stands out as the longest and most technically challenging. In particular, in the final movement, La Befana (The Epiphany), Respighi portrays the teeming throng of people packed into the Piazza Navona, one of Rome’s central squares, on the night before Epiphany. The effect is cinematic, with Respighi giving us close-ups of the goings-on – raucous dancing, entertaining street performers, drunken revelry, an organ grinder, and so on. Gradually, the camera pulls back from the crowd as they unite in song before the final heady peroration. The work is like a soundtrack without a film – Respighi composed it during the first golden age of film- and, like all great program music, it lets the mind create the imagery. Don’t miss this action-packed and high-octane Spring concert!
CONCERT HIGHLIGHTS
Leo Eylar, conductor
Artie Storch, conductor
Apple Gao, marimba
Golovko: Colombian Marimba Concerto (World Premiere)
Ravel: La Valse
Simon: Fate Now Conquers
Daughtrey: Rhyme or Reason, featuring the CYS Senior Orchestra Percussion Section
Respighi: Feste Romane
Young Artist Competition Winner
Apple Gao is a 17-year-old percussionist and a senior at Lynbrook High School. They began playing percussion at the age of 5, learning under the direction of Ja Hsieh. They have also taken lessons from Artie Storch and currently study under Galen Lemmon. In addition to percussion, Apple has taken piano lessons with Shu-Hua Cheng from a young age.
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 now available!
