"Chopin in Paris" at Hofmann Theatre at Lesher Center for the Arts

California Symphony celebrates the legacy of one of the greatest composers for the piano and takes audiences on a musical trip to the City of Light, with Chopin in Paris. Continuing California Symphony’s season featuring all female soloists, Austrian- Romanian pianist Maria Radutu headlines the evening with Frederic Chopin’s beautiful Piano Concerto No. 1 (in E minor, Op. 11). The internationally-acclaimed Radutu has performed as a soloist with leading orchestras throughout Europe, Asia, and the US, and now returns to California Symphony where she made her US orchestral debut in January 2017.

Music Director Donato Cabrera continues his triumphant 10th year with California Symphony, presenting a season of curated selections that are entirely new to the orchestra. The program opens with a work by French Caribbean composer Joseph Bologne, who became renowned as a master fencer, horseman, violinist, and composer in mid 18th Century Paris. Born in 1745 in the French colony of Guadeloupe to a wealthy white plantation owner father and enslaved mother, he was sent to Paris at age 13 to be educated, and went on to become the first prominent composer of African ancestry in Western history. His brilliant work L’amant anonyme (The Anonymous Lover) is an overture from one of his six surviving operas.

Also on the program is Cesar Franck’s groundbreaking Symphony (in D minor). This work inspired a generation of up-and-coming French composers, including Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Born in Liege, Belgium, Franck sought his fortune in Paris and achieved renown as an organist, teacher, and composer. From the 1920s through the 1960s, his sensuous and passionate Symphony (in D minor) delighted American audiences and was more popularly programmed than any of Beethoven’s nine symphonies.