This Sunday’s Bay Area Mix includes a performance from Vallejo Symphony‘s season-opening concert with their new Music Director Marc Taddei. When scheduling the three concerts of their season, he chose a trio of early Haydn symphonies reflecting ‘Morning,’ ‘Noon,’ and ‘Night’. They were written as a way for Haydn to get off to a good start with the family that would be his longtime patrons, as well as the musicians in his orchestra in the palace.
There’s more information about their remaining concerts at the Vallejo Symphony website, and about this performance of ‘Morning’ at our Bay Area Mix page.
Marc Taddei, although raised in New Jersey, has established a musical home in New Zealand, currently leading the Wellington Orchestra, and before that, the Christchurch Symphony. When he was appointed the Music Director in Vallejo, he wanted to inspire audiences to come to more concerts by linking them across the season. “I’m kind of a put-everything-on-red or put-everything-on-black kind of guy. I’m all in, in terms of programming. So what I like to do is create programs that individually are attractive, but if you go to more than one you start seeing the links that connect the programs. Audiences gain more resonance from going to more concerts. They don’t have to, of course, but if they do, I think they’ll gain a deeper understanding and hopefully a deeper sense of pleasure from the links we provide.” So in addition to the Haydn Morning, Noon and Night, each of the concerts will have a Russian (or Soviet) concerto, as well as a symphonic masterwork. For their next concert, on January 29th, they’ll be joined by cellist Zlatomir Fung to play the first Cello Concerto by Dmitri Shostakovich, followed by Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony. Their season ender in March will feature Kay Stern, concertmaster of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra playing the Kabalevsky Violin Concerto, followed by Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathetique’, Symphony No. 6.
