Festival Orchestra 3

Festival Orchestra with guest conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong and soloist Julian Rhee. “Igor on My Mind,” Allan Pollack’s fun-loving, energetic and rhythmic piece, impishly steals motifs straight out of Igor Stravinsky’s orchestral music. Then the real Stravinsky will be heard in the Violin Concerto in D, a neoclassical piece in four movements, written in the summer of 1931. It was used by George Balanchine as music for two ballets. Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is one of the most-frequently played compositions in classical music, but after the familiar opening notes, it offers surprising new passages to the close listener. At the time he wrote it, Beethoven was becoming increasingly deaf and correspondingly interested in the music’s theme of heroic struggle.

2025 Featured Composer: Igor Stravinsky

For 2025, Susan Waterfall’s composer series will feature the innovative and influential Igor Stravinsky. Immerse yourself in his world and his music, and understand how his music evolved over his lifetime with narrated chamber recitals featuring exciting guest artists, and various other settings of Stravinsky’s work across the Festival.

Explore the Series

Waterfall’s productions always present exciting, absorbing playing of great music, but are also rare, distinctive examples of what can be called music education, though they’re more conversational, truly a sharing of perspective, interest, anecdote. There’s a sense of immediacy to her delivery, weaving in and out of the playing, an intimately conceived present awareness of this heritage. It’s something unique that needs to be experienced.” -Ken Bullock, Berkeley Daily Planet