A Meeting Far From Home Symphony’s Featured Performers Come From Same Place To Play Here
Music brings people together, so the saying goes. That’s certainly proven true for violinist Martin Chalifour and conductor Jung-Ho Pak.
Chalifour and Pak both teach in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California, but they had never met before. Their first meeting took place this week right here in Spokane.
Sunday afternoon, Pak will conduct the Spokane Symphony at The Met while Chalifour plays Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. The program will open with a suite of pieces from the music Shostakovich wrote for a Moscow production of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and will close with Copland’s “Music for the Theater.”
The program will be repeated Tuesday.
It is not a lack of collegiality that has kept Chalifour and Pak from getting together in Los Angles. It’s been a lack of time.
The 36-year-old Chalifour just started his third season as principal concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He joined the L.A. orchestra after serving as associate concertmaster with the Atlanta Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra.
“I play about 100 concerts each season with the Los Angeles Philharmonic,” the violinist says. “But it still gives me quite some time to give solo concerts.”
Chalifour’s wife, Nancy, is a bassoonist and music administrator in Los Angeles. They have two young children.
Pak, who made his Opera House debut with the orchestra last week, is in his second season as associate conductor of the Spokane Symphony. He will also conduct three Symfunnies performances for Spokane schoolchildren and their parents while in town.
The 35-year-old conductor was a busy musician before accepting the job here. He was, and still is, music director of the Diablo Ballet and was associate conductor of the San Diego Symphony. He conducts the Disney Young Persons Orchestra in the Hollywood Bowl in performances broadcast several times each year on the Disney Channel.
In June, Pak married clarinetist Erica Horn. “We see each other far too little,” Pak laments. “But we talk every day on the phone, and sometimes she can travel with me. Not often enough, though.”
Earlier this year, he was appointed head of the conducting programs at both USC and the San Francisco Conservatory. “Last week, I was in a different city every day,” Pak says. “I’m going to have to make a decision about cutting out something; it’s just a case of deciding which limb to sever.”
Until then, Pak will spend much of this time shuttling between his several conducting and teaching jobs in California and his conducting in Spokane.
The work Chalifour and Pak will perform together is Mendelssohn’s well-known Violin Concerto. “It’s the perfect concerto,” Chalifour says. “The structure is so perfect and so obvious and its melodies are so beautiful. It’s still possible to find very small things you can do differently from other violinists, but if you try too hard just to be distinctive, you miss the point.”
Pak agrees and adds, “Usually you hear the Mendelssohn Concerto played in a large hall with a big orchestra. I’m looking forward to discovering its ‘chamber music’ qualities in a smaller hall like The Met.”
Pak’s choices of Shostakovich’s and Copland’s theater music for the program were influenced by the fact that The Met itself was once a theater. “Most people don’t realize that Shostakovich wrote a lot of music for plays and films,” the conductor says. “I think this will let people see another side of the man we know best from his symphonies and chamber music.”
Copland composed for theater and films, too. “Music for the Theater” was written in the 1920s, before Copland started writing in his Americana style of “Rodeo” and “Billy the Kid,” Pak says. “So it will show a different side of Copland, too.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT The Spokane Symphony will perform at The Met on Sunday at 3 p.m. and on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $9 to $19.50, available at the symphony ticket office (624-1200) and G&B Select-a-Seat (800) 325-SEAT.