Cármelo de los Santos performs tonight with the Los Alamos Symphony Orchestra. Photo by Leko Machado

Conductor David Chavez leads the Los Alamos Symphony Orchestra in rehearsal Monday evening in the LAHS Band Room. Photo by Bonnie J. Gordon/ladailypost.com

The Los Alamos Symphony Orchestra will present an All-Russian concert this evening at 7 p.m. at Crossroads Bible Church.

Conductor David Chavez has chosen an exciting all-Russian program with the Festive Overture of Dimitri Shostakovich, the Violin Concerto in D Minor of Aram Khachaturian with Cármelo de los Santos as violin soloist, and the Symphony No. 9 of Shostakovich. There is no charge for the concert and, as always, donations are gratefully appreciated. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Many members of the Los Alamos Symphony Orchestra have played the Festive Orchestra before but the Shostakovich Symphony #9 and the Khachaturian Violin Concerto are new to almost all of them.

“This all-Russian program has great appeal in the orchestra and offers good parts for all sections,” violinist Jackie MacFarlane said.

LASO is excited to welcome as guest soloist, Brazilian-born violinist Cármelo de los Santos. De los Santos enjoys an exciting career as a soloist, chamber musician, and Associate Professor of Violin at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. From his extensive concerto appearances to his recent performances of the 24 Caprices by Paganini, his virtuosity and musical commitment captivate audiences worldwide.

De los Santos met LASO Conductor David Chavez when Chavez was getting his degree in conducting at UNM 12 years ago.

I’ve got a lot of respect for Cármelo,” Chavez said. “It’s an honor to work with him.” Bringing a guest soloist adds a new type of energy to the orchestra, he said.

Chavez and de los Santos chose the Violin Concerto in D Minor of Aram Khachaturian as his solo piece together.

“It’s a very happy piece, written under the influence of the birth of his son,” de los Santos said. “It incorporates Armenian folk dance music.”

De los Santos began playing violin at age 10 and fell in love with it at once. “No one had to tell me to practice,” he said. “I’m attracted to hard things that take years of learning.”

“The violin is a voice I don’t have,” de los Santos said. “I need the violin to say things I can’t say by speaking.”

At the age of sixteen de los Santos gained celebrity status in Brazil by winning its most prestigious music competition, the Eldorado Prize, in São Paulo. Since then he has been a guest soloist with more than 40 orchestras.

In 2002, de los Santos made his New York debut as soloist and conductor in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall with the ARCO Chamber Orchestra. He has won prizes in several international competitions, including the first prize at the 4th Júlio Cardona International String Competition (Portugal).

When Chavez decided on the program, he thought it would be relatively easy to put together. That proved untrue, he said.

“The harmonic language of Shostakovich is hard to get with your ear, although it looks easy on the page,” Chavez said. “In the process of pulling things together, you realize the music is very complex.”  

This is also true of Khachaturian, Chavez said. “The Violin Concerto is small in scope, but the language is difficult to assimilate,” he said.

The Festive Overture of Dimitri Shostakovich written in 1954 for a concert to commemorate the 37th anniversary of the October Revolution. Shostakovich was given short notice and composed it in three days. The work is a standard piece of the orchestral repertoire and was featured in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and the 2009 Nobel Prize concert.

The Violin Concerto in D Minor of Aram Khachaturian was completed in 1940 and dedicated to the Russian violinist David Oistrakh, who premiered it in Moscow that year.  The work has become a staple of the 20th century violin repertoire and remains popular into the 21st century.

Symphony No. 9 of Shostakovich was composed and premiered in Moscow in 1945. It was originally intended to be a celebration of the Russian victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The final draft of the Symphony turned out to be completely different from his original idea of the symphony being “majestic in scale.” It is, instead, transparent and light with joie de vivre and gaiety. Shostakovich predicted that “musicians will like to play it and critics will delight in blasting it”. That prediction was right in the long run. In Russia it was banned in 1948 for eight years.

This should be an interesting and entertaining evening of music. Don’t miss the opportunity to hear this all Russian program and the chance to hear Cármelo de los Santos, one of the finest violinists in our state.