Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja approaches music head on, and sees it as an involving activity for the listener. She is Music Director and soloist when Ojai at Berkeley returns this week at Cal Performances, opening tomorrow night at Zellerbach Hall, with four different program performances through Saturday night.
There’s more information about the programs at Cal Performances’ Ojai at Berkeley webpage.
The Grammy-winning Moldovan-Austrian violinist will be giving the Bay Area premiere of her semi-staged program called Bye Bye Beethoven to open the festival tomorrow night, which mixes works by Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Charles Ives, John Cage, and György Kurtág, played by Kopatchinskaja and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. “I think music is so much about the individuality and saying something really personal,” she says. “And every single piece has a soul, and we have to discover it every single time. And of course, there is a signature of an artist. So all that is a huge puzzle, coming together, should be a piece of art, corresponding with our time. With a mirror of our reflection.” On Friday there’s a concert devoted to the music of Michael Hersch, with sopranos Ah Young Hong and Kiera Duffy, who’ll sing a work co-commissioned by Cal Performances called I hope we get a chance to visit soon. Saturday afternoon there’s a concert of Romanian and Moldovan Folk music with Kopatchinskaja’s parents joining her on violin and cimbalom, and Saturday night includes a centennial performance of the Suite from Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale, the Ligeti Violin Concerto, and Bartok’s Divertimento for Strings. “We should really abandon the idea that a concert is a temple. It’s not about a priest who tells you (so to say) truth out of his holy book, and you listen, and you say yes, and you believe it without questioning. No, it’s actually about questioning everything.”
