Saturday, March 7, 7:30 pm, CNU’s Ferguson Center for the Arts, Newport News
Sunday, March 8, 3 pm, Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, Virginia Beach
For its opening weekend celebration, Virginia Arts Festival will present Joshua Bell and Academy of St. Martin in the Field in concert. Bell will lead performances of Romantic masterworks by Camille Saint-Saëns and Antonín Dvorák.
With a career spanning almost four decades, GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated artists of his era. He has performed all over the world and is music director of the legendary chamber orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.
Bell identifies strongly with his Jewish heritage, particularly through his mother. Her family roots trace to Israel and Minsk, while Bell’s father was an Episcopalian priest, giving him a blended cultural upbringing. Bell often credits his mother’s strong will and the Jewish tradition of parental involvement and education for shaping his discipline and work ethic. He describes himself as culturally Jewish and recalls growing up attending bar mitzvahs. Music serves as a spiritual force in his life, embodied by his 1713 “Gibson-ex-Huberman” Stradivarius, an instrument deeply connected to Jewish musical history.
The London-based Academy of St. Martin in the Fields has been among the most celebrated orchestras since its founding in 1959 and has been led by Bell since 2011.
Camille Saint-Saëns was a Parisian prodigy who served as organist in ancient cathedrals, taught at the Paris Conservatoire, and gained international fame for his operas. He was enjoying the peak of his professional success in 1880 when he composed his Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor, Op. 61 for legendary virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate. Bell will revisit this titan of the violin repertoire that he recorded with the Orchestre Symphonique De Montréal when he was only 22 years old.
The Academy was founded as a conductorless ensemble, and continuing this tradition, Bell will play-conduct Antonín Dvorák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major—a rare and impressive feat. Dvorák’s rags-to-riches story is one of hard work, finely-tuned skill, and Czech patriotism that got him noticed by the European establishment and out of provincial obscurity. By 1890, his works were programmed in concert halls from Britain to the United States, and he was acknowledged at home for his burgeoning international reputation by being inducted into Bohemian Academy of Science, Literature and Arts in 1889. In response, he composed his joyous eighth symphony, replete with overt references to Czech folk music idioms. He had finally gained the power to shrug off his German publisher who insisted on German-language movement titling, instead favorite his native Czech. The work was a bold example for composers to explore their national traditions in the symphonic form, and a joyous celebration of his Bohemian identity through music.
For tickets, go to vafest.org, call 757-282-2822, or visit Virginia Arts Festival box office at 440 Bank Street in Norfolk.