Funding for this program has been provided by the FSC Foundat bringing together adults of all abilities and backgrounds as they pursue passion, prosperi and purpose.

Linda and Alvaro Pascotto the Carol Frank Buck Foundation in memory of Carroll.

Frank Buck.

Additional support provided by these funders.

This is a highlight of every yea something I look forward to from the time I go home to when I come back.

These are the best musicians in They get to play with these Metr Opera musicians and San Francisco Symphony musicians and people from all over.

It's just such a thrill.

Living in New York City.

You don't have mountains.

You don't have a lake.

So it's a nice change of pace in the summer and something that you can expec to have to look forward to all y And it's rare in our industry to play with other great musicians, to do an orches made up of people from all over.

You have phenomenal players from major orchestras mixed in with players who they've never played with be So it's, you know, they're all getting to know each But it's a thrill to make music with new personalities and having different conversatio musically.

It's great.

I love it.

We will be working with conducto David Masur, who is the music director of the Symphony.

His father was the maestro of on old orchestras, the New York Phi So to have that connection and get to work with him for the time is exciting.

It's a wonderful moment when, you know, at least for me to step in front of an orchestra that I've not conducted before.

But it's not about us, really.

It's about the music.

It's about what are these compos who have written these amazing p trying to tell us?

Still, even if we've performed i 100 times, we shouldn't care.

We should go to this piece and l what is it telling us for today, for even for you, individually as a musician today.

That here is always exciting and for me it's been great fun.

We're going to be performing some of the Brahms, Brahms Hungarian folk dances.

The Brahms Hungarian dances.

This was written late 1800s.

And Brahms, this was his moneymaker piece of sorts.

He was a very famous composer and successful in his own lifeti In fact, these... set of Hungarian folk dances, Its some of the most popular an most popular music that Brahms ever composed and also earned him the most money, I think, in his I mean, he composed symphonies a of chamber music, lots of piano But these Hungarian dances were so popular that he wrote th for all different kinds of instr And back then, there was no radi there were no recordings.

So people would buy the sheet mu There were no, you know, Xerox m So that's how composers made mon These folk dances, he wrote 21 of them.

And originally for duo piano.

So four hand piano on one instrument.

And the arrangements for orchest were done by different composers over time Two of them were arranged by his and contemporary Dvorak.

So we're doing 1, 19 and 21.

It's the set that was proposed by our guest conductor that week Ken-David Masur.

So it'll make a beautiful set in the middle of our concert.

I'm looking forward to that.

It's going to be great fun and the audience is going to love it This was actually a precursor to influenced a lot of the ragtime which is hard to imagine.

But if you listen to the Hungarian Dances, it definitely has that little ra lilt to it.

And you think of Scott Joplin coming in the early 1900s.

So I love the connection from Old World to New World.

The Haydn.

Sinfonia Concertante is a concer four soloists, which is a little Usually when you're a concerto s you go out on stage alone.

Not only is it unique in that there are four soloists, he also four distinctly different instruments to feature So we have a pair of strings the violin and the cello and a pair of double reeds, the oboe and bassoon.

I can't say I've ever done that in any kind of chamber music or and it was really fun preparing because it's really chamber musi with an orchestra.

There aren't that many composers that have done this for this com so it's kind of a treat to get t A great feeling to go out on sta three other people, like a team But you create a lot of differen that we're not used to hearing.

So he pairs sometimes the oboe with the cello or the v with the bassoon or in any, any that you can combine those instr He does it sometimes.

He passes a tune around all the instruments.

And I think it's really interest to hear it played by these different instru that have different inherent qua I'm really looking forward to he for orchestra musicians perform Sarah Vonsattel is an elegant violinist.

Her sound is perfect for this Haydn Sinfonia Concertante.

Winona Zelenka, Our principal cellist is a stunning musician.

I'm delighted to have Nathan Hughes as our principal oboist and to be able to feature him in all these great pieces.

Whitney Crockett, who was my colleague years ago at the Metropolitan Opera, and he's been principal bassoonist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Whitney is somebody I admire as a musician, as an artist, as an instrumentalist.

I'm delighted to be able to use all four of these musicia together in this Haydn piece.

Before Haydn, Pleyel actually wrote a piece for this same instrumentation in and it was very popular.

It sold a lot of tickets, so Haydn's manager encouraged him to write that could maybe sell as well.

So sure enough, they wanted it and he he wrote i In a live performance.

Nothing ever goes perfectly.

There's always something afterwards you can say, you know I wish I had done that different But there is also the other side of it that there's this added excitement that you're never going to get when you're alone in a practice room.

That's the exciting thing about performing.

I was thrilled to play the Haydn Sinfonia Concerto, and that was probably my persona highlight because it took a lot and a lot of preparation for the other three soloists who were am and I felt so privileged to play with them.

So when it came together, it was really fulfilling.

We're playing Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony on Saturday nigh The Rachmaninoff summer playing this week is so amazing.

This is a mammoth piece.

It's such an incredibly.

..I hope this isn't a bad word, juicy piece of music.

It's such a...

I want to say juicy part.

It's romantic and it's epic and it's visual.

It's so rich and it feels like a Lots of rhythms that are differe in different parts of the orches So we're all like playing differ and we're going together and just the harmonies are so in When I heard that we were going to play this it's like hearing that someone's to give you a big piece of Sache You just go, Oh, you're so happy it's really well written for a c It's not up there like Haydn.

It's just in the beautiful cello voice area, and it's really super romantic.

Musically, the entire symphony u from what he presents in the first four bars.

Just a simple note that goes up and then down and kind of wiggles around that But all the intervals that he tr as he turns into themes.

In the third movement, it's slow and it has these gorgeous harmon and a fantastic clarinet solo.

At the beginning with a cello choir accompanying.

So we have seven cellists, movin harmonies underneath the clarine but all over there's so many beautiful tunes in it that it's just always something to look forward to.

There's always something you can sink your teeth into and really in a sort of highly romantic way He weeds this tapestry with this large orchestra, very and it's really like a walk thro first movement is very brooding.

Second movement fast and excitin Third Movement has some of his most go melodies, and then an exciting last movement that ties it all t Funding for this program has been provided by the FSC Foundat bringing together adults of all and backgrounds as they pursue passion, prosperi and purpose.

Linda and Alvaro Pascotto the Carol Frank Buck Foundation in memory of Carroll.

Frank Buck.

Additional support provided by these funders.