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Unknown: God. Thank You. Welcome to the 1991 Cabrillo Music Festival and to The Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, among the many interwoven themes of this festival this summer is that of the composer as performer. You

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may wonder why, but I think that that I myself being a composer performer, feel perhaps a little bit part of a vanishing species, like so many other events in our time, the acts of creation and recreation and music are Becoming specialized, and while

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this may, in certain ways, produce a benefit for music in terms of technical command. I think that the notion of the composer as somebody, someone who is continually involved in the actual making of music is something intensely important

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and something we need to constantly refresh ourselves with so several of the composers on the programs that you will hear between now and August 4 were as well known in their time as performers as they were composers. Certainly the case of

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Gustav Mahler. You all know that Mahler had a terrible time getting his own music accepted. People acknowledged him as probably the greatest living conductor, but they suffered through his symphonies. Okay, all right, you know, we'll sit

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through this 90 minute Symphony because we know that he does Figaro so well, it seems, it seems almost impossible to believe, because Mahler, when I was growing up, Mahler was still a sort of unknown entity. You You knew the Tchaikovsky Fifth

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Symphony, you know the Dvorak New World Symphony, but you probably didn't know the Mahler seventh nowadays, you can hardly go to a concert without hearing a piece of Mahler, another composer, of course, Mozart. Of course, in Mozart's day, the

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separation between composer and performer was was much less hieratic. It was expected that you did both, and I swore that I would not perform Mozart this year. I swore to myself I wouldn't, because, like everyone, I feel that my my

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relation to Mozart is one of extreme intimacy, and that that is what is so great about his music is that no matter how often you hear it, or with how many people you hear it, you're you're directly, intimately spoken to by this music. And of

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course, in this ghoulish celebration of the year of his death, which has turned out to be a marketing dream. You know, performances by Mozart over 3 billion served. We've, we've had to suffer through a bloated, exaggerated image of a man who

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was, after all, a human being. I hope that in my lifetime, the scourge of a recent film about him will be forgotten, so that we can address him again as for what he is. Um. Well, and not to forget Benjamin Britton, four of whose pieces were featuring on

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our programs. We heard a piece written by him at the when he was 19 years old. We'll hear a piece written by him in his late 20s. The Sinfonia direct William on our last concert. We'll hear a very late Britain work sung by Sanford Sylvan and accompanied

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by Richard good, the pianist, the songs and proverbs of William Blake, which shows Britain at his most intimate and probably most adventurous work written for Dietrich, Fischer duscal In the last, almost the last year of Britain's life. And

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most Astonishingly, we're going to hear, I think, one of Britain's major works, and a work which was almost totally forgotten, at least in this country after its premiere in the mid 1950s This is a piece, a full evening ballet called the

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prince of the pagodas. And largely because of problems with the original choreography, and probably also because it was a ballet and it wasn't an easily digestible work, the piece kind of slipped unnoticed into oblivion, until very recently,

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when my friend the British composer and conductor, Oliver Nelson, resurrected it and recently recorded it. So we're going to hear almost all of the second act of that ballet on our August 2 concert. And what is particularly thematic about that

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vis a vis Cabrillo is we have a music festival here. Has always been very much involved in music of other cultures. And we also have one of the most esteemed American composers living in our neighborhood, Lou Harrison, who has in indulged his love for

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gamelan music throughout his lifetime. Well, it turns out that in this one piece by Benjamin Britt, there is a heavy dose of gamelan music. And it's, it's, it's quite a brilliant effect, a brilliant achievement by by Britain, because he he is

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able to recreate with shocking fidelity the sound of the Balinese gamelan by using absolutely conservative Western orchestra. There's not a single instrument sneaking in to make it sound exotic. I thought maybe you'd like to hear just a

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little, a little touch of this. This is from the towards the end of the second act of the prince of the pagodas. And what you'll hear is a solo violin, sort of flitting in and out from this, this game on very stately gamelan music. And that violin

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embodies the figure of this kind of Cinderella figure, Bell, Bell Rose, who is the subject of the story. So let's hear just a little fragment from this game on music by Benjamin Britton, which we'll hear later in the Week You

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DM, Ah,