Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra Principal Symphonic Conductor Rossen Milanov leads the CSO in a performance July 2 in the Amphitheater.
Set between two works that navigate the complexity of humanity is an American debut of work from a composer who’s no stranger to Chautauqua. The Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra will bring each of these pieces to life at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater with Principal Symphonic Conductor and Music Director Rossen Milanov.
The program is composed of Samuel Barber’s Essay for Orchestra, Op. 12; Angel Kotev’s Rhapsody No. 3 (“Fateful”); and Béla Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin Suite.
Barber was born in Pennsylvania; his parents had the means to send him to Italy for the summers to study under Arturo Toscanini, one of the most acclaimed musicians in the late 19th century. Toscanini was known for interpreting the big, Romantic classics, which was exactly in Barber’s lane, and Toscanini took a keen interest in the young musician.
Essay for Orchestra, Milanov said, is “certainly for the people who appreciate one of the features in your classical music that has a calming and sort of a pastoral effect. It’s a beautiful piece that one could even meditate on.”
Tonight will be Rhapsody No. 3’s American debut.
Kotev has been visiting Chautauqua for about six years and is the father of CSO second violinist Liana Kirvan. Kotev was born in 1951 in Bulgaria and many of his compositions have been performed and recorded by the Bulgarian National Radio Symphonic Orchestra
“It’s a real treat for us to have a composer that is going to be present in the audience,” Milanov said.
Bartók was born in Hungary (present day Romania) and lived at the same time as Barber — “so we’re representing two opposite trends of the music in the time,” Milanov said.
Bartók, by the age of 4, was able to play 40 pieces on the piano; in his later years he used Hungarian folk music to create a distinct musical style, synthesized with modernism and classicism.
“What his contribution to the entire history of music is, first of all, very organically, using the folk music and the laws that get discovered in these tools that he recorded himself, and at the same time combining them with the latest avant garde, particularly in the area of rhythm,” Milanov said. “That is something that the audience is going to hear right away.”
The piece is one of Milanov’s favorites; he appreciates the music was meant to “unfold without any expectations or law. It doesn’t fit in any box; It has almost an improvisatory quality about it.”
CSO Fellow Pedro Mendez finds Bartók’s music profound — there’s a simplicity to it, he said, but great depth.
Mendez is both a violist and violinist — before he was even born, his mom found a violin at a garage sale, guaranteeing his gift in a literal and metaphorical sense. He and violinist Diego Diaz, who is also in this year’s CSO Fellow cohort, grew up together in Venezuela. Both musicians went through El Sistema, a publicly financed music-education program, and both went on to perform in Chicago Sinfonietta, as many El Sistema alum do. Mendez credits El Sistema with developing the social aspect of the kids’ lives and creating lifelong bonds — on top of the free lessons and instruments.
In the United States, Mendez felt like he had to start from scratch, but remembers a teacher telling him, “this instrument, this violin, is your passport, so this should become your motive to fight. Just go for your dreams.”
Previously a professor and director of the Academia Latinoamerica de Violín and a violin teacher at the Vicente Emilio Sojo Conservatory, Mendez first became a teacher at the age of 15, teaching other kids at El Sistema.
“Teaching is an art. When you teach, you can get to know not only about music, but you can get to know a lot of different personalities from each person,” he said. “You can read people from the first moment because you have a connection and you can learn from them. You don’t have to be in the same rhythm of learning (as others).”
