December 4, 2022
Mozart’s true life story needs no Hollywood-style embellishments, says Music Director Donato Cabrera. Tom Hulce as Wolgang Amadeus Mozart in the 1984 hit movie “Amadeus”. By California Symphony Music Director Donato Cabrera. A murderously jealous rival. A mysterious commission from a “gray messenger.” Rumors of poisoning… If the circumstances of Mozart’s death at 35 read like…
August 3, 2021
Behind every great composer is… a great patron. Without the financial and emotional support of Nadezhda Von Meck—the woman Tchaikovsky corresponded with for 14 years and yet never met—the first Russian composer to achieve international acclaim might never have made it. By California Symphony Nadezhda von Meck was the widow of a wealthy railroad magnate,…
March 8, 2018
What additional treasures might exist had Mozart survived beyond 35? And what iconic works *wouldn’t* we have, if other great composers had died young like him? When I am… completely myself, entirely alone… or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and…
January 3, 2018
“How he dealt with this deafness is one of the great stories of humanity, not just of music.” — Music Director Donato Cabrera The Arcadian of Pastoral State by Thomas Cole (on left). Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler (on right). By California Symphony Music Director Donato Cabrera Imagine directing an orchestra you can’t hear. Or playing a…
