“The California Symphony has returned to live performance and is getting ready for its 2021–2022 season at the Dean Lesher Center in Walnut Creek,” writes Michael Zwiebach in Tuesday’s (8/17) San Francisco Classical Voice. “There will be, as of now, no vaccination requirement for ticketholders, but patrons will be asked to mask up inside… The orchestra opens on Sept. 18 and 19 with Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Piano Concerto, with Adam Golka as soloist, followed by Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 5…. A month and a half later … the orchestra’s strings play a full program, with George Walker’s lovely Lyric for Strings.… Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons … Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst [and] Gustav Mahler’s full string section arrangement of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet…. The French Impressions concert, March 26 and 27, opens with Three Studies After Couperin, a chamber work by Thomas Adès … [and] the pandemic-delayed premiere of Katherine Balch’s Illuminate, a song cycle based on Arthur Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations…. The epic finale comes May 14 and 15 with a world premiere by the orchestra’s current composer-in-residence, Viet Cuong, Bay Area native Nathan Chan playing Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, and [Music Director Donato] Cabrera conducting … Tchaikovsky’s Fourth.”
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