Season Opener Concert
Join Maestro Eylar as he inaugurates the 70th season of the California Youth Symphony and celebrates the return of our internationally recognized and award-winning Senior Orchestra to live concert performances. Maestro Eylar has chosen a dazzling opening program featuring virtuoso works for orchestra by Berlioz and Ravel, and he welcomes our Young Artist Competition winner Emily Hwang, who will perform Stamitz’s Viola Concerto in D Major. Our opener for this concert is the sparkling Roman Carnival Overture, composed by Berlioz in 1844. Making use of themes from his opera Benvenuto Cellini, Berlioz brilliantly depicts a raucous and wild carnival scene with vivid orchestral color and makes use of the Italian Saltarello dance rhythm to propel the music to a truly thunderous close. Carl Stamitz (1745-1801) was one of the leading composers of the Mannheim School and composed over 40 concertos for various instruments, including clarinet, cello, flute, oboe, bassoon, basset horn, violin, viola d’amore and viola. His viola concerto has remained one of the staples of the viola repertoire and is characterized by its elegant melodic writing and virtuoso solo passagework for the viola. We close our program with music from Maurice Ravel’s monumental 1912 ballet score Daphnis et Chloé, composed for the Ballets Russes. The Ballets Russes was the brainchild of Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev, and Diaghilev commissioned works by Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Richard Strauss, Prokofiev, Respighi, and other titans of the early modern era. Daphnis et Chloé is Ravel’s most ambitious and longest work, and the composer fashioned two orchestral Suites from the ballet that have enraptured and mesmerized audiences since they were first heard over one hundred years ago. The vast orchestral forces Ravel calls for in the score create soundscapes of immense beauty and power that are breathtaking in their depiction of the love between the goatherd Daphnis and the shepherdess Chloé.
Leo Eylar, conductor
Emily Hwang, viola
Berlioz: Roman Carnival Overture
Stamitz: Viola Concerto in D Major (Emily Hwang, soloist)
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé, Suites 1 and 2
Concert Safety Information
Please visit our Concert Safety Information page to read about how we are making our concerts as safe and enjoyable as possible during the ever-evolving Covid-19 Pandemic. We are requiring proof of vaccination, along with a valid photo ID, and masks for all in-person audience members. Negative COVID tests are not allowed to be used as a substitute for proof of vaccination.
At this time, we are unable to welcome guests under the age of 12 who are not yet eligible for vaccination. As soon as children under the age of 12 become eligible to receive a vaccine, fully vaccinated children will be welcomed back to CYS concerts.
Thank you for your understanding.
CYS Livestream
For the first time in CYS history, we will live stream our concerts on October 31st and December 5th on the CYSMedia YouTube channel. Guests who are not fully vaccinated or not yet eligible for vaccination are able to view our live performances from the safety of their own homes. Along with our patrons and supporters who are unable to physically attend these concerts, our live stream provides access to our families and friends worldwide. Click the image above to view the livestream.
Young Artist Competition Winner
Emily Hwang, 16, is a junior at Gunn High School. She began playing viola at the age of 8 under Sujung Seok, and currently studies with Dimitri Murrath at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College Division.
CYS Young Artist Competition
Each spring the California Youth Symphony holds its Young Artist Competition to select soloists for the following season. The Competition is open to pianists and instrumental soloists under age 19. Two young artists will be chosen by a panel of three judges to perform with the CYS Orchestra during the November or March concert series of the following season.
Application form becomes available in January!
