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MainStage 2 - Greetings and Farewell

Saturday, December 31, 2022
7:30 PM 9:30 PM

Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley 101 Cross-Sproul Path Berkeley, CA, 94704 (map)

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Ben’s Last Concerts as Music Director

From Ben Simon:

My final MainStage program goes from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again. Franz Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony (he died too soon to finish it) is paired with the wacky musical humor of PDQ Bach’s (the last and oddest of JS Bach’s twenty-odd children) Unbegun Symphony, for which he was born too late to start! My chosen soloist for this final program is the remarkable Amaryn Olmeda, a 14-year old virtuso who is already making her mark on the classical music scene. Amaryn is a tremendous talent with unlimited potential, and will performing one of my favorite violin concerti. Felix Mendelssohn’s famous Violin Concerto E minor.

We finish this concert with the very apt Farewell Symphony by Franz Josef Haydn, in which the players leave the stage one by one during the final movement. Composed as a humorous reminder to his employer Prince Esterhazy that his musicians all wished to return from his summer estate to their homes in Vienna, it’s a brilliant piece of musical theater and seems a fitting close to my twenty-one wonderful years leading this amazing orchestra. I am leaving my heart with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra!