Reviews

Christina Mok

I have been waiting for the right moment to acknowledge the incredible performance by the Symphony's concertmaster Christina Mok last November as the soloist in Brahms's Violin Concerto conducted by Andrew Grahm.  Mok's performance in this monumental work easily matches that of any guest artist the Symphony might engage. We are fortunate that she brings her virtuoso skills to this orchestra and to our community.

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Wineglass Concerto

Later this month, Monterey Symphony's conductor Jayce Ogren leads the ensemble in a program featuring works by Beethoven, Weber, Jennifer Higdon and a world premiere by Emmy-award winning composer John Wineglass.

Wineglass, who serves as the Symphony's composer-in-residence, is a prolific man of music who has commissions lined up well into the future. Happily, for music lovers on the Central Coast, Wineglass world premieres continue to happen every season here. This month alone, his "Pastures of Heaven premiered with Ensemble Monterey and in the Symphony's Palo Corona program, audiences will enjoy his first piano concerto. Last season, Edwin Huizinga was the featured soloist in Wineglass's powerful and widely admired violin concerto inspired by Big Sur and the Essalen tribe.

Trailblazing pianist Lara Downes joins the ensemble for "The Great Migration: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra."  Downes and Wineglass are colleagues and worked together on shaping the concerto, with its theme of disaffected peoples searching for better lives. Wineglass is especially excited about the second movement, which is a jazz score.

Downes was honored as 2022 Classical Woman of the Year by Performance Today, and has been called "a musical ray of hope" by NBC News and "an explorer whose imagination is fired by bringing notice to the underrepresented and forgotten." She is described as an artist who draws inspiration from the legacies of history, family, and collective memory, excavating a broad landscape of music for her acclaimed performance and recording projects that serve as gathering spaces for her listeners to find common ground and shared experience.

Ogren says concert three, Palo Corona, meaning Crown Tree, is about transformation, transcendence, salvation, and overcoming personal setbacks.

"The program opens with Weber's dramatic 'Overture to Der Freischütz,' and also includes Jennifer Higdon's transcendent 'Blue Cathedral,'" he says. "Weber's 'Der Freischütz' is a story about the redeeming power of love. Jennifer Higdon's 'Blue Cathedral' represents one's travels over a lifetime and toward the afterlife. These works reveal the deep and sometimes mystical connections between the natural and supernatural worlds.

"Beethoven's iconic Symphony No. 7 brings the concert to a thrilling conclusion. The work embodies bacchic, dance qualities, to the extent that Richard Wagner called it `The Apotheosis of Dance.'"

Performances take place Feb. 17 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 18 at 3 p.m. at Carmel's Sunset Center. Both concerts include pre-concert lectures in the main concert hall. Lectures are 30 minutes long and are held on Feb. 17 from 6:30-7 p.m. and on Feb. 18 from 2-2:30 p.m. On Sunday, all concert attendees are welcome to stay for a post-concert Talk Back and a glass of wine with music director Jayce Ogren and composer Wineglass in the lobby.

For more tickets and information see www.montereysymphony.org or (831) 646-8511.