July 10, 2023

Julimar Gonzalez is a name to remember and watch. I’ve known Julimar for many years. She started coming to Chautauqua’s Music School as a highly-gifted, but very young violinist and tonight appeared  as soloist with our orchestra as a polished and accomplished young artist. All along that journey she has been under the nurturing guidance of Almita Vamos, CHQ faculty and among the great violin teachers in this country.
 
Julimar played Shostokovich’s 1st concerto…no mean feat for any one, and immensely challenging for the orchestra as well. The work is a remarkable journey from darkness, not to light as one might expect, but to some kind of frenetic, frenzied, frantic energy (pick the  f-word that resonates for you). It is a work that whips the audience into a froth unlike hardly any other that I know. It is also one that plumbs the depths of despair, agony and hopelessness. There are times that the work is simply frigid like only Shostakovich can produce.
 
Not only does this work take extraordinary technical ability of the part of everyone on that stage, but it takes emotional maturity, poise, and focus.  Julimar and the Music School Festival Orchestra brought all of the above and then some to the occasion. As they say, “the audience went wild.”
 
Also notable on this program was the CHQ premier of conductor Ryo Hasegawa, our 2023 conducting fellow. Ryo led the orchestra through a rousing and beautiful “Carnival Overture” of Dvorak. It was an exceptional performance.
 
We finished the program with Hindemith's “Symphonic Metamorphosis”, a work that demands a unique style of playing, even unique among Hindemith’s works. It is a different style than his "Symphonie Mathis Der Maler" or "Konzertmusic for Strings and Brass". To me this work is something of a  musical manifestation of the Bauhaus movement…geometic, mechanical, engineered, architectural…but in all that, beautiful, an artistic descendent of JS Bach. This orchestra hit the mark!
 
Congratulations to all involved!
 
NEXT UP
 
Chautauqua Institution
Music School Festival Orchestra and Opera Conservatory
July 17 2023 8:15 p.m.
Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater
Chautauqua, New York
 
PUCCINI          Gianni Schicchi
PUCCINI          Suor Angelica

#julimargonazles #chautauquamusicfestival #shostakovich