There’s a small seaside resort town on England’s southeast coast: Eastbourne. It’s much like other seaside resorts. Except that it’s the place where not one, but two masterpieces about the sea were written: Debussy’s La Mer (spring 1905) and Frank Bridge’s The Sea (summer 1911). Something in the water? Both are orchestral tone poems, but while La Mer is impressionistic, The Sea is more intense and late-Romantic. Join us for an afternoon cruise, no life jacket required.
Then, we travel north to Finland, transported to an otherworldly realm of haunting memory and drama in Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, the only concerto he wrote. Sibelius aspired to become a violin virtuoso himself, which might explain why he wrote a piece that’s so darned friggin’ hard to play! It’s dark and brooding, passionate, with driving rhythms and, then, a surprisingly jaunty dance. Ariel Pawlik-Zweibel, a winner of our Khuner Young Artist Concerto Composition, sends us off into the summer on a (very) high note!
Come early at 2:40pm for a pre-concert talk; refreshments available at intermission. We're fully accessible and family-friendly! This is our last concert at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Next season we move to the beautiful ValleyCenter for the Performing Arts (formerly Holy Names University).