Vallejo Symphony Orchestra Announces 2022 Season Lineup

Vallejo Symphony Orchestra has announced its 2022 season, Beethoven: Higher Revelation.

VALLEJO SYMPHONY was founded on the shared belief that music is a powerful force for bringing a community together and that live music is an essential part of a richly lived life. Founded in 1931 by a group of community leaders seeking to revitalize their city during the Great Depression, the Symphony has remained a cornerstone of Vallejo's cultural life in the decades since.

Since its inception, Vallejo Symphony has grown in stature under a succession of music directors. After the establishment of the Vallejo Symphony Association in the 1960s, Dr. George Wargo took the podium and led the orchestra for 21 years. His tenure was succeeded by that of David Ramadanoff, a former associate conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and winner of the 1980 Leopold Stokowski Conducting Award. Under his three decades of dynamic leadership the Vallejo Symphony developed into an orchestra with regional appeal and expanded to include musicians from the entire San Francisco Bay Area.

Check out the full lineup below!

PASTORAL

Saturday, April 23 at 8:00 pm

Sunday, April 24 at 3:00 pm

Caroline Shaw, "Entr'acte"

Sergei Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No.1 in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 1, Soloist Jeffrey LaDeur

Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, "Pastoral"

The "Pastoral" concert opens with Caroline Shaw's astonishing "Entr'acte." You'll listen spellbound as Shaw, the youngest composer to win the Pulitzer Prize in music, compresses time and stretches it out again-taking us, in her words, "behind the looking-glass." From its dramatic opening statement to the fiery thrills of its close, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1 delivers a virtuoso punch tempered by lush lyricism. Jeffrey LaDeur will perform this striking concerto with all the power and nuance it deserves. Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, the only one of his symphonies to depict a story, takes the listener for a Sunday walk in the countryside, with bucolic melodies and birdcalls that set a pastoral scene, a country dance led by an out-of-time brass band, an unexpected thunderstorm, and a hymn of thanksgiving.

THE DANCE

Saturday, May 7 at 8:00 pm

Sunday, May 8 at 3:00 pm

Ruth Crawford Seeger, Music for Small Orchestra

Ruth Crawford Seeger, "Rissolty Rossolty"

Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23, Soloist David Fung

Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92

Ruth Crawford Seeger, ultramodernist composer and matriarch of the folk-revival Seeger family, composed in radically different styles. Music for Small Orchestra came from her early, avant-garde period, while "Rissolty Rossolty," a crazy-quilt polyphony of three folk tunes, was composed as a whimsical tribute to the never-ending energy of folk music. David Fung, who performed with VSO in 2018 to great acclaim, returns to play Tchaikovsky's tempestuous Piano Concerto No. 1. The melody from this concerto's iconic opening became a huge hit when transformed into the love song "Tonight We Love," but the rest of this audacious early work is even more compelling, as it alternates between dreamy passion and quick passages of dazzling difficulty. Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 shows the master at the height of his powers-transporting us from a pastoral beginning through wry humor, high tragedy, and triumph.

FATE

Saturday, June 18 at 8:00 pm

Sunday, June 19 at 3:00 pm

Trey Makler, "Pixie"

Alexander Scriabin, Piano Concerto in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 20, Soloist Jared Redmond

Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67

We open our season with "Pixie," a spritely, delicious treat by Trey Makler, VSO's Composer in Residence. We are excited to introduce Trey to you and honored to present the premiere of this new work. Next, Pianist Jared Redmond plays the first of three luscious piano concertos scheduled for this year: the Piano Concerto in F-Sharp Minor by Alexander Scriabin, a contemporary and classmate of Rachmaninoff. Scriabin's concerto combines the passionate technique of Rachmaninoff with the grandeur and finesse of Chopin in a rapturous tour-de-force that will sweep you off your feet. Beethoven's innovative Symphony No. 5 anchors the program. Its magisterial four-note theme has been described as "the sound of Fate knocking on the door." The winds of revolutionary fervor blow through this early 19th-century work, in which Beethoven broke new ground that would transform the world of music forever.

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