Venezuelan Pianist and Three Russian Composers Open Symphony's Classic Season

The Stockton Symphony opens its 87th Classics season with the lush orchestrations of Russian composers Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Rachmaninoff, featuring a fantastic young talent, pianist Gabriela Martinez.
 
The first performance of the Classics season is on Saturday, October 26, at 6:00 p.m. at Warren Atherton Auditorium on the San Joaquin Delta College campus in Stockton.
 
Ms. Martinez has won numerous national and international prizes and awards; her most recent accomplishments include first prize and audience award at the Anton G. Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Dresden.  She was a semifinalist at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, where she also received a Jury Discretionary Award.
 
Lauded by The New York Times as "compelling, elegant, and incisive," Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Martinez is quickly establishing a reputation and earning praise as a versatile artist who combines "panache and poetry" (Dallas Morning News) with a "sense of grace and clarity" (The Star Ledger).
 
Audiences have a special affinity for Russian symphonic literature, which basks in lush orchestrations for the “big tunes,” and which never fails to excite in passages of vibrant rhythmic momentum. Many Russian composers base some of their themes on folk melodies, or else compose their own original tunes that nevertheless sound folk-like—accounting in part for the great popularity and accessibility of the Russian tradition. Rachmaninoff excelled at composing the type of “big tune” mentioned above. Just as such passages of his reach wonderful climaxes in his famous piano concertos, so, too does his wonderful Symphony No. 2 that that Symphony will perform.