By Evan Pasternak, violin
The 2023-24 San Diego Symphony season has concluded, and it was certainly one to remember. The orchestra traveled to New York City and Tijuana within a single month, and we performed at venues ranging from our Rady Shell and the Civic Theater to the Youth Transition Campus and Sycuan Casino in El Cajon. While the orchestra spent another season awaiting the reopening of our hall, we utilized this time to cement our relationship with the local community and feature works relating to the turbulent times in which we live. Many of my favorite performances from this season were of these new works.
The San Diego Symphony began its season with a tour to Carnegie Hall. That program featured Shostakovich Symphony No. 5, but began with the world premiere of a work co-commissioned by the SDSO and the National Symphony Orchestra: Carlos Simon’s Wake Up: A Concerto for Orchestra. Like in Britten’s A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, each section had its moment to shine. The strings indulged in schmaltzy melodies, the winds and brass serenaded the audience with fanfare, and the percussion section articulated itself with rhythmic ferocity. While Simon originally intended the work to be premiered in a newly renovated Jacobs Music Center, the lively work became an introductory statement for a formidable ensemble looking to introduce itself to a wider audience.
The following month, we performed Billy Childs’ saxophone concerto, Diaspora. In this piece, Childs depicted experiences of the forced Black American diaspora. Saxophonist Steven Banks and the orchestra conveyed the complex emotions of Childs’ tone poem, which interposes brutal, percussive sounds that illustrate the indignities of slavery with spiritual melodies that pay homage to the strength of the church in Black American culture. The soulful, wistful nature of the piece resonated with the audience and musicians alike, and Banks’ facility on the saxophone was truly a wonder to behold.
Similarly, Vladimir Tarnopolski’s Danse Macabre laid bare the horrors of war he witnessed as a Ukrainian man living in Moscow. In one of my favorite concerts of the season, the orchestra performed this bleak, pessimistic work alongside Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. This performance centered the more primitive aspects of music-making that are often neglected in our constant search for beauty. Classical music is often hyped for its sublimity, and this pairing of works served as a stark reminder that raw, authentic music-making can sometimes be direct and unforgiving, as is life.
During the winter season, the San Diego Symphony gave the West Coast premiere of Gabriela Ortiz’s Altar de Bronce, a trumpet concerto featuring Pacho Flores. This work featured several mood shifts, from the hymn-like introduction to the invigorating beat of the Mambo section. Flores, with his versatility, charisma, and sense of humor, personally embodied the free spirit of the work. His level of engagement with the audience truly lit up the hall and was a pleasure to experience from the stage.
We saw an opportunity this season to share our music with audiences beyond the radius of our downtown stages. The San Diego Symphony played several concerts in Escondido, La Jolla, and even a runout performance in Palm Desert. One of my favorite venues from this season was the Baker-Baum Concert Hall at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center in La Jolla. It is a smaller theater, and our concerts there allowed the symphony to present more intimate programming that featured multiple soloists from within the orchestra. In February, we performed two Bach solo works at the Conrad: Orchestral Suite No. 2 (with Rose Lombardo, principal flute) and Concerto for Violin and Oboe (with Jeff Thayer, concertmaster and Sarah Skuster, principal oboe). This smaller orchestration allowed us to actively fill the hall with sound in a manner that would be excessive with full sized string sections.
We look forward to seeing our audiences when we return home to our newly reopened Jacobs Music Center. The Shell is a fantastic outdoor space that the orchestra will continue to use for our summer season and special events, but the use of our indoor hall is a crucial component of our journey and evolution as an ensemble. Until then, the symphony has a captivating set of programs lined up at the Rady Shell that we are excited to share with audiences this summer.
