Arts & Events

On Saturday, August 5, Cal Performances presented violinist Sarah Chang with the Asian Youth Orchestra at Zellerbach Hall in a program of music by Richard Strauss, Jean Sibelius, and Ludwig van Beethoven. With the Asian Youth Orchestra’s founder, Richard Pontzious, conducting, the evening began with the Tone Poem Don Juan by Richard Strauss. An early work by Strauss, Don Juan took up the same womanizing character made famous by Mozart’s great opera Don Giovanni. However, Richard Strauss altered the Don’s character by making his Don Juan seek the ideal woman who would be, as it were, all women in one. Because he can never find his ideal woman, Don Juan suffers from disgust and disillusionment at his predicament, and, as Strauss wrote, “This Disgust is the Devil that fetches him.”  

Strauss’s symphonic treatment in the Don Juan Tone Poem relies on propulsive rhythms to suggest the Don’s ardor, which we hear in the opening upward surge of the strings. This is followed by a tender melody suggesting the lover’s longings. A third theme, this one heroic, is heard in the horns, offering a kind of portrait of the Don. Several love episodes ensue, including a beautiful melody first heard in the oboe and repeated by the clarinet. Then things heat up, as Strauss lets loose the orchestra in an outburst of color and volume. Just when it seems all too much, a dissonant chord is abruptly followed by silence. The end is near, and a feeble rustling or shudder in the orchestra marks the end of Strauss’s Don Juan. 

Next on the program was Sarah Chang as soloist in Jean Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in D minor. This work opens with a passionate, extended song for violin, played exquisitely here by Sarah Chang. An orchestral interlude introduces a yearning theme initiated by bassoons and cellos. This precedes a second theme heard in the violin, more sedate than the first theme. Next a march rhythm sets the music in motion, leading, unexpectedly, to a cadenza for solo violin based on the work’s opening theme. This cadenza then leads directly into a recapitulation of all the themes in this movement. The second movement , marked Adagio di molto, presents Sibelius at his most Romantic. Woodwinds open followed by the violin playing a tender melody against an accompaniment of chords heard in the horns and bassoons. When the whole orchestra takes up this melody, the soloist decorates it with a latticework of tonal variations, played beautifully by Sarah Chang. The finale is a propulsive rondo set in motion by timpani and basses. Sarah Chang then introduced a bold theme. Striking virtuoso passages for the violin ensue as well as two bold orchestral tutti, all of which keep the music moving brilliantly forward. In the coda, Sarah Chang ran off spectacular octave passages against an accompaniment recalling the work’s main theme, as Sibelius’s Violin Concerto came full circle. Tumultuous applause greeted Sarah Chang, Conductor Richard Pontzious, and the Asian Youth Orchestra. 

After intermission, Pontzious returned to the podium to lead the orchestra in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92. This great symphony has always struck listeners and scholars alike as a work definitely out of the ordinary. With its propulsive rhythms, Richard Wagner called it “the Apotheosis of the Dance.” Others called it a village festival, a peasant wedding, or, even, a work conceived by its creator in a drunken frenzy. Perhaps the best word for it is the one chosen by Maynard Solomon -- “Carnivalesque.” For in Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony we are indeed taken outside the norms of mundane life and its conventions and restrictions, and we enter instead a Carnivalesque world of exhilarating freedom. Beethoven himself wrote, “I am Bacchus incarnate, appointed to give humanity wine to drown its sorrow…. He who divines the secret of my music is delivered from thee misery that haunts the world.” 

Leading the Asian Youth Orchestra, Richard Pontzious gave an energetic account of this Dionysiac symphony. The opening movement features two themes: the first is heard in the winds accompanied by long, rising scales in the strings. The second theme is a gentle melody for oboe. The second movement, marked Allegretto, proceeds in a series of variations on the heartbeat rhythm of the opening measures. The third movement is structured as a scherzo. The sonata-form finale lets out all the orchestral stops, as the music surges relentlessly forward to a climax that outdoes all the previous climaxes heard in the earlier movements. It is as if everything we heard earlier was planned to culminate in this exuberant, intoxicating finale. Richard Pontzious and the Asian Youth Orchestra did themselves proud rising to the challenge posed by this most dynamic, most Dionysiac, of all symphonies.