Russian pianist Konstantin Soukhovetski is a magnificent new arrival upon the international music stage. While completing his doctorate at Juilliard School of Music in New York City, he also has been receiving numerous awards and winning prestigious competitions. After a highly acclaimed 14 performance tour of South Africa in 2007, Konstantin has performed widely in the United States, including with the Houston Symphony, and gave his London debut recital in 2011 at the Wigmore Hall. At just age 31, he not only represents musical sophistication but also has a charm and exuberance that delights all who experience his playing. Konstantin really “connects” with his many audiences, and he is a favorite in Auburn as well.

Konstantin returned to Auburn this past weekend to deliver, with the Auburn Symphony under the direction of Maestro Michael Goodwin, a stunning performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor. This pianist has previously shown his virtuosic skills with the Auburn Symphony performing the Russian masterpieces: Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s 1st Concerto, to great acclaim. Konstantin has now shown he can be a splendid Mozartian as well. From the entry of the piano in the Allegro, he brought a calm and elegant contrast to the drama of the orchestra’s introduction, and then fully entered into the tragic but thrilling spirit of the music. The Larghetto second movement was played with great delicacy, while still allowing for the expression of moments of wit and pathos, in this childlike, but not simple music. The Finale’s theme and variations were full of wonderful exchanges between piano and orchestra, especially featuring the woodwinds. Throughout, a brilliant light shone through the deeply nuanced darkness in this complex concerto. The Auburn Symphony accompanied with great sensitivity under the guidance of maestro Michael Goodwin. The performance displayed a true feeling of synergy between soloist and conductor: the visual exchanges and shared pleasure were exciting to observe. Konstantin shows a grace and presence that belies his years. His playing had a serene yet vibrant quality as he performed this sublime concerto, truly one of Mozart’s greatest. As an encore, he gave a loving performance of Mozart’s Fantasia in D minor K 397.

Konstantin celebrated his birthday this week with a benefit recital for the Auburn Symphony. Auburn audiences certainly look forward to welcoming him again.

Ronald Greenwood
January 24, 2012

Click on the link above and then go to the bottom of the page to hear Konstantin’s interview!

Richard Altenbach with his Scarampella violin, made in Mantua, Italy, in 1887. His bow, a Vigneron, is nearly a century old.

Richard Altenbach has played with many great symphonies: the Houston Symphony Orchestra, Mozart Camerata, Omaha Symphony, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony and, now, the Auburn Symphony.

Altenbach, 53, is a seasoned violinist and composer. He composed his first song when he was 5 years old, setting a picture book of his own creation to music. “Super Banana and Peel” was born, setting the stage for a lifetime of music that spans multiple genres. These days, in addition to continuing his 20-plus years of work in the film industry, Altenbach can be heard as concertmaster of the Auburn Symphony.

“A concertmaster knows, first of all, technically how to make things as simple as possible,” explained Michael Goodwin, symphony maestro. “He knows how to make things practical for the string players.”

That means relaying the maestro’s instructions to the rest of the orchestra via example and body language, tuning the orchestra and, in Goodwin’s words, being “an extension, ideally, of the conductor.”

“I began violin when I was 10 and a half, in public school, after hearing an orchestra play,” said Altenbach, who lives in Penn Valley with his wife, Dawn, and 4-year-old son, Bren. “I called up my mom and said, ‘I want to play the violin.’”

He has played since then, never giving up the instrument for another, although he is also a veteran pianist and at one point played tuba.

In high school in Los Angeles County, Altenbach played for numerous youth symphonies and community orchestras, even serving as concertmaster of the orchestra at Whittier College, where he would later study music.

After earning his master’s degree in violin performance from the University of Illinois, Altenbach landed his first professional job as associate concertmaster of the Omaha Symphony, where he also played with the renowned Fontenelle String Quartet. It was a wonderful experience, he said, but there was something missing.

“I needed to buy a good instrument,” he said. “I needed to buy a great violin.”

After a year in Omaha, Altenbach said, he auditioned and was accepted into the Houston Symphony Orchestra, where he would spend four and a half years playing first violin (the primary violin role in an ensemble, which typically contains the melody).

The job made it possible for Altenbach to buy his great violin, which he purchased from his University of Illinois mentor, Sergiu Luca. The Italian instrument was made in 1887 by Stefano Scarampella, and Altenbach said he has never switched violins since.

“It looked and sounded beautiful,” he said. “I’ve never wanted to go back – I’ve never wanted to keep searching for the illusive Stradivarius.”

Hollywood calls

Homesick for LA and looking to make a name for himself, Altenbach returned to Southern California, living with family until he got settled. He served as a freelance substitute player with the Pacific Symphony and Long Beach orchestras, and then began playing with the LA Opera and Joffrey Ballet. He auditioned for the LA Chamber Orchestra, where he spent 22 years in the first violin section.

Not long after Altenbach began work with the orchestra, Hollywood began calling. In 1989, the violinist began work in the studio industry, working with orchestras and as a soloist on film scores, television and with recording artists.

He has worked with Hans Zimmer, John Williams and the late Jerry Goldsmith, and plays principal violin for Danny Elfman. Throughout his career, Altenbach has contributed to more than 1,000 film scores.

Foothill living

These days, however, he does that work either by traveling to LA or recording in his home studio, Bachiosaurus, in Penn Valley. He and his wife, a professional singer and actress, came to Nevada County after the birth of their son, settling into the mountain life they both treasure.

In addition to working on composing, Altenbach has jumped into the foothill music scene, performing as a soloist for Music in the Mountains, as concertmaster for InConcert Sierra and serving on the board of the Nevada County Composers Cooperative, a group of composers whose mission is to foster the creation and performance of original music. He also teaches violin and composition.

Recent composing projects include the score for “The Killing of Mary Surratt,” a documentary about the woman hanged for her involvement in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and “Cancer Man,” a short film about a comic book artist diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Symphony stomps its appreciation

Goodwin met Altenbach when he was concertmaster for the Apollo Ensemble in Oregon House. He asked Altenbach if he could lead a couple of rehearsals while the former concertmaster, Kay KyungHa Lee, was out. After she had a baby in July and stepped down, Altenbach stepped in.

“We’ve never had a finer concertmaster,” Goodwin said. “He has enormous experience and knowledge, both of the repertoire and of how to help the orchestra to play at their best.”

The musicians have taken such a liking to Altenbach, Goodwin said with a chuckle, that they applaud and stomp their feet when he comes on stage.

Altenbach’s experience with Goodwin and the symphony musicians is no less joyful.

“I think he has got the cream of the crop from Placer County and Nevada County,” Altenbach said.

Altenbach has served as concertmaster for two concerts so far – the “Auburn Symphony in the Park” and Masterworks Concert One, “Spirit of the North,” which included the overture to “The Flying Dutchman.”

Altenbach praised Goodwin for his music selection, which usually includes an easily recognizable piece along with “the very worthy unknowns – music that should be played,” such as a German flute concerto that was played during the Masterworks concert.

As Altenbach continues his work in the Auburn Symphony, he’ll also be working to establish more musical roots in the foothills, as opposed to having to travel to LA so often for studio work.

“It is important for an artist to be surrounded by beauty,” Altenbach said. “To be inspired by creative beauty – the beauty of nature.”

Reach Krissi Khokhobashvili at krissik@goldcountrymedia.com.

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Film credits

Richard Altenbach has worked on more than 1,000 film scores. Just some of his credits include:

• “Jurassic Park”

• “Spiderman”

• “The Matrix”

• “Pirates of the Caribbean”

• “The Lion King”

• “Titanic”

• “Prince of Persia”

• “Toy Story 3”

• “Alice in Wonderland”

• “Indiana Jones IV”

• “Alice in Wonderland”

•“Real Steel”

Altenbach was also one of one of 12 composers worldwide to participate in the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Film Composers’ Workshop, which brings together top industry professionals and challenges participants to compose, arrange and conduct an assigned film cue.

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Up next for the Auburn Symphony

What: “Messiah Singalong”

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 13

Where: Placer High School auditorium, 275 Orange St., Auburn

Featuring: Selections from Handel’s masterpiece, with nationally recognized guest soloists and members of choruses from around the region. Soloists are soprano Robin Fisher, mezzo-soprano Zoila Munoz, tenor Jae-Ho Lee and bass Burr Phillips. Everyone is invited to sing in the immortal choruses, including “Hallelujah!”

Cost: $20 at the door; a complete vocal score available at the door for $10

Information: (530) 823-6683, auburnsymphonyoffice@gmail.com or www.auburnsymphony.com.

Showtime for Penn Valley 11-year-old James Shawcross

TheUnion.com

By Kyle Magin
Staff Writer

 
James Shawcross dives under the panels of a Kawai piano as eagerly as a gearhead dives under the hood of a 1965 Stingray.

The 11-year old from Lake Wildwood, thin and sporting a shock of blonde hair, jams a finger at the inner workings of the instrument to point out the strings he’s fixed, using terms familiar only to those dedicated to the craft of fixing such things.

A whir of energy, James pops up almost immediately after indicating the problem and recounts, step-by-step, the fix for a key on the piano that was buzzing “like a baby wasp, learning to fly,” he said. He’s got a story of a fix, or a challenging tuning, for a number of the seven pianos tucked into the Shawcross living room.

Altogether the family has 15 pianos, and an organ James is learning to play. His mother, Julie, is a piano teacher, and father, Charles, fixes pianos as a hobby, one that he’s handed down to his son.

James’ talents don’t start with the mechanical prowess, though.

He won the piano company Roland’s Atelier Organ Festival national youth title this May with a piece he performed. He’s placed in competitions hosted by the Auburn Symphony and ragtime performances in Sacramento.

He’s progressed so quickly since he began to play, shortly before he turned six, that Charles drives James to Carmichael, Calif., to find a teacher suiting his skill set, a former instructor at a conservatory in San Francisco.

“I knew, maybe three weeks after he started to play, just watching how quickly his hands moved across the keys, that he was doing things I could never do,” said Charles Shawcross, a self-professed music fan but novice player.

James plays haunting tunes he wrote himself, Chopin’s Minute Waltz and “Great Balls of Fire,” on an organ, nearly attacking it with his zeal for music.

Charles encourages his son to tinker with his pianos to round out his understanding of the instrument, he said.

“If you really want to perform well, you have to understand the instrument,” Charles added.

Charles continues on in this vein, but James cuts him off, eager to get to the next point of conversation.

“OK Dad, OK,” James said, switching from Chopin and piano pedals to his adventures in building and flying paper planes over large chasms, an activity he enjoyed on his visit to Las Vegas from a hotel balcony.

“It was totally awesome,” James said. “It was like daylight at nighttime there. I could watch TV out of my hotel window. I threw the paper airplane out the window… and it almost dive-bombed someone at the pool.”

That he was enthralled with the big lights of that entertainment capitol seems fitting for James, who plays to the cameras with a toothy grin in photos of his performances posted on his website (www.aloveofmusic.com).

He straddles the bench between the keyboards of two pianos and begins to play the same song simultaneously with one hand on either instrument. It’s endearing exhibitionism, a display of the precocious talent he practices an hour each day.

If James gets too full of himself, Charles knows how to playfully tweak his ego. Quizzed as to what music he likes to listen to, James pauses mid-whirlwind and seems stumped.

“You like that girl’s song… the one you have the crush on,” Charles says, playfully.

“Dad! Dad!” James shoots back, trying in vain to shush his father from revealing his crush, one Taylor Swift.

The mention of the country music star’s name gives James a thought, though, and he sprints across the living room to the organ and begins to bang out a country tune.

That wild energy is James’ gift, and sometimes, a problem, Charles said. The soon-to-be Mt. St. Mary’s Elementary sixth grader can have difficulty focusing, he added.

“He’s capable of doing so well at school” but he bores easily, Charles said.

It’s certainly not for lack of smarts. Charles and Julie Shawcross are raising James without TV, so he occupies his mind when not practicing music by reading encyclopedias, front to back.

“If I don’t have something in particular I want to read, I just do like this with my hand,” he said, zipping it across the tops of a set. “And I pick one out.”

Those hands.

They are constantly in motion, whether it’s on the piano, deftly popping an encyclopedia out of its place or catching lizards, frogs and toads — a favorite pastime. He isn’t so enthused about learning vocal music at school, but has found he likes to sing and hum while chasing down reptiles and amphibians on his jaunts outdoors, grasping in the dirt with the hands that produce such beautiful music.

He would like to use those hands to get him into a top-flight conservatory some day for musical study, he said.

And after that?

“James loves the spotlight, he wants to be famous,” Charles said.

A video and audio recording of James’ performances will be attached to this story Thursday.

To contact Staff Writer Kyle Magin, e-mail kmagin@theunion.com or call (530) 477-4239.

The Auburn Symphony’s annual Young Artist Competition enables serious musicians ages 8 to 20 from Placer, Nevada and El Dorado counties to compete for cash prizes.

These young musicians recently gathered for a winners’ recital at the home of Symphony Board Member Audrey Mueller.

Maestro Michael Goodwin screened initial applications and demos from dozens of entrants from the tri-county area and finalists were invited to perform at a live audition.

The musicians competed in either piano or instrumental categories.

Violinist Alexis Keller, 11, of Loomis, was the grand prize winner.

Flutist Maquette Kuper of Davis has two upcoming concerts this month:

* An appearance as a soloist with the Auburn Symphony at the Mondavi Center at 3 p.m. Sunday, and

* An appearance with a group of other Davis musicians at 7 p.m. Friday, March 18, as part of the Bravo Bach festival at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Sacramento.

The Auburn Symphony rents the Mondavi Center each spring to showcase the orchestra in a proper concert hall. (Mondavi’s Jackson Hall offers better acoustics than any venue available in Placer County, where the orchestra is based.) Typically, the spring symphony concert at Mondavi draws about 900 to 1,000 people.

With the Auburn Symphony, Kuper will play the “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” by Claude Debussy, one of the favorite orchestral showpieces for the flute.

“It’s a very beautiful French Impressionist classic,” Kuper said. “It’s very sensuous and free-seeming, although the structure of Debussy’s music is that you actually have to play rather strictly in his time. The end result is lush sounds and cascading lines that he intentionally wrote to follow the architecture of arabesques (the elaborate decorative design featured in Spanish/Moorish architecture).

“The piece has these gorgeous cascading lines created by the flute, followed by the oboe, the clarinet and a little violin. What makes the piece most haunting is that it opens with a solo flute — nobody else is playing. That draws the audience into this very small sound, as if you’re being pulled into another world.”

The Auburn Symphony concert also will feature the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Franz Liszt, with pianist Richard Cionco, and the Symphony No. 5 by Dmitri Shostakovich, which was famously written after Soviet strongman Josef Stalin had severely criticized an opera by Shostakovich. The composer feared for his life at the time. Maestro Michael Goodwin will conduct.

Tickets are $40 general, available at http://www.mondaviarts.org or (530) 754-2787.

For the March 18 concert on the Bravo Bach series, Kuper will play with violinist Robert Bloch, a retired member of the UC Davis music faculty; cellist Julie Hochman; and harpsichordist Susan Erickson. All are from Davis. They’ll be joined by vocalists and an oboe on several selections.

Naturally, the program will feature music by J.S. Bach, including movements from Bach’s “Musical Offering,” including an example of a Canon and Ricercar as well as the famous Trio Sonata. There also will be some music by composers who were Bach’s students and contemporaries.

Tickets for the Bravo Bach recital are $15 general and $10 for students. St. Mark’s United Methodist Church is at  2391 St. Mark’s Way, Sacramento (east of Watt Avenue, near Country Club Plaza). For information, go to http://www.stmarksumc.com/st-marks-presents or call (916) 483-7848, ext. 12.

The Bravo Bach series continues with concerts featuring various artists on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at 7 p.m. through  March 27.

Kuper has been a Davis resident since 1980. She is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and spent two summers as a fellowship student at Tanglewood, and studied in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship. She has been a performing participant in master classes by the late Julius Baker, who served as principal flute with the Chicago Symphony and the New York Philharmonic.

Kuper is a founding member of Sacramento’s Capitol Chamber Players, and she is founder and director of the Davis Youth Flute Choir. She led that group on a tour of Japan in 2008, performing in Inuyama, a sister city of Davis, and elsewhere. In August 2010, Kuper took  the flute choir to Anaheim, performing at the National Flute Association convention.

Kuper and the Davis Youth Flute Choir will welcome a group of Noh flute players from Inuyama when they visit Davis in November, the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the sister-city relationship. Kuper and the Davis Youth Flute Choir also are planning a trip to another sister city of Davis — Sangju, South Korea — in June 2012.

— Reach Jeff Hudson at jhudson@davisenteprise.net or (530) 747-8055. Comment on this story at www.davisenterprise.com