Peninsula Symphony presents: Carmina Burana! May 16, 2009

When 250 singers and instrumentalists gather on stage for a performance of a powerful masterpiece like Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, you can anticipate an awe-inspiring experience. In continuation of its 60-year dedication to providing “Local and Live” music, the Peninsula Symphony’s May presentation features soprano Nikki Einfeld; tenor J. Raymond Meyers; baritone Eugene Brancoveanu; San Jose Symphonic Choir, Leroy Kromm, Music Director; and Ragazzi Boys Chorus, Joyce Keil, Artistic Director, Laura Gardener, Conductor. Pieces for the evening are Orff’s Carmina Burana, Tchaikovsky’s Festival Coronation March and Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G Minor. (www.peninsulasymphony.org) Performances are on May 15 & 16 at 8pm at the San Mateo Performing Arts Center and the Flint Center in Cupertino. Tickets are $34 General admission and $29 Senior/Student.

The Peninsula Symphony’s May presentation features soprano Nikki Einfeld; tenor J. Raymond Meyers; baritone Eugene Brancoveanu; San Jose Symphonic Choir, Leroy Kromm, Music Director; and Ragazzi Boys Chorus, Joyce Keil, Artistic Director, Laura Gardener, Conductor. Pieces for the evening are Orff’s Carmina Burana, Tchaikovsky’s Festival Coronation March and Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G Minor. Performances are on May 15 & 16 at 8pm at the San Mateo Performing Arts Center and the Flint Center in Cupertino. Tickets are $34 General admission and $29 Senior/Student. www.peninsulasymphony.org

Orff uses a large and extremely vivid orchestral palette, and some of the most original vocal writing ever conceived, as the texts move from joy to anguish and from humor to bitterness. The poems and music are moralistic, tender, bawdy, and amorous, providing a breathtaking experience for performers and audience. Carmina Burana (1936) is based on a set of provocative 12th century texts discovered in a Bavarian monastery in 1803. Orff selected 24 of the poems (mostly in Latin, but with some Middle High German and Old Provençal) for this supremely colorful musical setting.

Music Director and Conductor, Mitchell Sardou Klein remarks, “This concert promises to be an extraordinary and memorable experience. Orff’s music is pulsating, visceral, and rhapsodic at turns, spanning a vast emotional range.”

We are also proud to present the winner of the 2008 Irving M. Klein International String Competition, a spectacular young violinist named Tessa Lark, performing the glowing and gorgeous Bruch Violin Concerto. “It is always a special joy to present a future star of the musical world at the beginning of what promises to be a major career,” states Klein.

To set the stage for these two masterworks, the orchestra will open the concert with a rousing, but rarely heard work of Tchaikovsky, the very festive Coronation March, commissioned for Tsar Alexander III.

The Peninsula Symphony, a 90 member community orchestra led by Music Director and Conductor Mitchell Sardou Klein, celebrates its 60th anniversary of providing unique and first-class music to the Bay Area community. In addition, as part of its “Bridges to Music” outreach programs, the Symphony shares its passion for music by offering programs in schools, providing free or discounted tickets to students and their families, hosting two competitions for students, and presenting a free family concert and outdoor summer concert. This season the Orchestra performs concerts in venues from Cupertino to San Mateo. For tickets or more information visit www.peninsulasymphony.org or call (650) 941-5291.

Official Website: http://www.peninsulasymphony.org