From Vienna to Silicon Valley

Mitchell Sardou Klein leads the Peninsula Symphony in a concert program that highlights local talent twice over as they play From Vienna to Silicon Valley. There’s a work from just a few years ago by Mason Bates, a Brahms masterpiece, and the 2017 winner of the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, Jeremy Tai, solos in Elgar’s Cello Concerto.

You can find out more about the concert at the Peninsula Symphony website.

The travelogue nature of the programming begins right in the backyard of the orchestra. “The Silicon Valley end of this is a piece by Mason Bates. The Bay Area’s very own, considered to be the most performed composer of his generation, which is a very productive musical generation, I might add.” It’s called Garages of the Valley, for the places where such giants as Apple, Google, and Hewlett-Packard began. “It’s a terrific piece that looks at the dynamic spark of Silicon Valley, and translates that into some musical terms,” Klein says. Next, Jeremy Tai takes on the Elgar Concerto. “The Klein Competition is very international in scope, we’ve had winners from many many different countries, we always have applicants from 15 or 20 different nations. But once in a great while, I guess this is the second time only in 32 years, we get a winner from the Bay Area… Jeremy Tai, he had been in the competition a few years ago, did great, and came back with even more intensity of emotional expression, and just knocked it out of the park last June. And we’re very very thrilled to have him come and play with the Peninsula Symphony, and he’s going to play a piece that I think really matches the intensity that he brings to the stage, the Elgar Cello Concerto.” The Brahms that closes out the program is one of Klein’s favorites. “It’s a piece that is on my desert island list. I think it’s Brahms’ greatest symphonic work. It is another of those pieces where the audience is taken through some of the deepest emotional caverns and valleys and peaks, and ends with certainly Brahms’ most exuberant finale.”