Decadent Delights at the Santa Cruz Symphony this Weekend

Hearing a symphony in person is the first time many people discover why music is considered medicine and food. So it's no stretch for the Santa Cruz Symphony to present “Decadent Delights,” its last concert of the 2010-11 season this weekend at the Civic Auditorium.

The featured soloist for the Saturday and Sunday performances is a pianist with diamond earrings who wore distressed jeans, black boots and a leather coat at the Friday preview. Moving like a dancer trained in martial arts and speaking as well as he plays, Adam Neiman will perform the Liszt's First and Second Concertos.

The 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt, celebrated with Neiman's over-the-top virtuosity on the Steinway concert grand this weekend, “is on everyone's Liszt this year,” said John Larry Granger, beloved maestro of the symphony.

Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Civic and Sunday  at 2 p.m. at the Watsonville Mello Center, the orchestra will perform Percy Grainger's “In A Nutshell,” the two Liszt concerti and Russian Rimsky-Korsakov's “Capriccio Espagnol,” for listeners with an ear for the real thing.

At Friday's preview  at the Civic, Neiman told the audience, “In the First Concerto, Liszt invents the 'tone poem,' a continuous piece of music where the orchestra says, 'OK, I'm ready to play now,' and the pianist says, 'No, I'm not done yet.'

“Liszt's concertos are pianist as protagonist and orchestra as landscape. They play against each other. He marries the sacred and profane, the heavenly and demonic. Eventually what is found is nobility.”

Neiman began playing piano at age 5 and counts Rachmaninoff, Rubenstein and Cortot among his favorite pianists. He's performed with 12 international symphonies, including Santa Cruz, and as many world-class conductors.

When asked if he still has a goal, he didn't mention Carnegie Hall, but he did mention "happiness, yoga and love,” in addition to music.

Neiman treated preview guests to key motifs in both of Liszt's concerti as he showed the composer and performer to be a modernist in 1849, 50 years before Stravinsky and Schoenberg.

“Music history is written by the victors—Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, the Germanics," Neiman said. "Therefore, Liszt is considered peripheral. The Hungarian lived in Paris and was the most outstanding piano virtuoso of his time. That term is not just excessive acrobatics; it has virtue in it. Liszt created emotional torment, beauty and passion in his audience.”

Granger told the life story of Percy Grainger, the Australian composer who is not to be confused with Granger, the maestro. “There is no 'i' in maestro,” Granger joked.

Percy Grainger made instruments in the early 20th century that may be considered precursors of the synthesizer.

“He breaks all the rules of bar lines, key signatures and pitch, which makes him a precursor also of John Cage,” said Granger.

Grainger had a baton with a whip at the end of it, displayed in the S&M room of the Victoria, Australia, museum dedicated to him. “He may have been a second-tier composer, but he earned his stripes,” quipped Granger.

The Santa Cruz Symphony's 2011-12 season was announced on Friday.

“The next season is our biggest, growing from four to five double concerts," Granger said, "and there's a little hand-wringing going on about how to pay for them.”

The orchestra's fondest hope is that the season will sell out through subscriptions.

Gene Wright, president of the Symphony League, is already on the job. “We have 200 members, and we're the largest single donor, raising $75,000 in support of the symphony this year.”

The new season runs Oct. 1 to May 13, 2012. The 54th season begins with the Lone Ranger theme, with "William Tell Overture" by Rossini, Mendelssohn's "Violin Concerto" performed by Sheryl Staples of the New York Philharmonic, and Dvorak's "Symphony No. 8."

The Special Concerto concert in November highlights three young soloists, two of whom are Santa Cruzans. Aaron Miller opens with Mozart's "Piano Concert No. 24," and Chetan Tierra plays Tchaikovsky's "Piano Concerto No. 1." Nikki Chooi concludes the concert with Beethoven's "Violin Concerto."

In the second concert, organist Jonathan Dimmock will perform Poulenc's "Organ Concerto" and Saint-Saens' "Organ Symphony."

See more of the 2011-12 season at the Symphony website. The season ends in May 2012 with Vaughan Williams' "Dona Nobis Pacem," a moving plea for peace.