Elgin Symphony's spring festival opens with Hollywood theme

American film composers, both from today and earlier generations, will be the focus of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra's annual spring festival April 16-May 1.

The multiweek event will open when pianist Kevin Cole joins Music Director Robert Hanson for the Pops Series concerts of April 16-18, the program titled "ESO Goes to Hollywood." The program will feature music accompanied by classic film clips.

"It made sense to have Kevin as our guest artist since he is one of the leading interpreters of the music of George Gershwin, whose music figures prominently on this program," Hanson said.

Along with Gershwin (including the final movement from his Concerto in F and excerpts from the Oscar-winning film "An American in Paris"), the program will feature music of Jerome Kern, John Williams and Max Steiner, among others. Additional films sampled will include "Swing Time," "The Adventures of Robin Hood," "Bandwagon" and "Singin' in the Rain," accompanied by scenes projected on a screen over the ESO.

"Those pieces were chosen the same way we choose any pops program - what makes the best program, how much variety do we get, and so forth," Hanson said. "Kevin will also play the 'Warsaw Concerto,' along with some solo pieces without orchestra."

Performance times are 8 p.m. April 16 at Schaumburg's Prairie Center for the Arts, and at Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin at 6 p.m. April 17 and 3:30 p.m. April 18. The early starting time for Saturday is due to the ESO's 60th anniversary celebration immediately following the concert in the Heritage Ballroom at the Centre of Elgin, featuring a champagne reception and dinner, along with a silent auction. Tickets for this special event are $75 per guest. For more information, call (847) 888-4000.

The spring festival will conclude with Classics Series concerts at the Hemmens at 1:30 p.m. April 30, 8 p.m. May 1 and 3:30 p.m. May 2, with a program titled "Exiles in Hollywood." Hanson will conduct, and violinist Jennifer Frautschi is the guest soloist.

"What we've chosen for this part of the festival is music by composers who were known mainly for their movie music, but who also wrote classical compositions for the concert stage," Hanson said. "We're opening with music by (Hungarian-born film composer) Miklos Rozsa, a piece called 'Overture for a Symphony Concert,' which he wrote in 1957. We also have Jennifer Frautschi playing Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violin Concerto, in which he uses themes from four of his movies. The concerto was written in the late 1940s, but he used music from some of his movies from the '30s: 'Another Dawn' and 'Juarez' has music quoted in the first movement, 'Anthony Adverse' in the second movement and the second theme in the third movement is from 'The Prince and the Pauper.'"

The concert will also include Franz Waxman's "Sinfonietta for Strings and Timpani," and the program will close with the orchestral suite from fellow German composer Richard Strauss' opera "Der Rosenkavalier."

"The reason we're doing the Strauss work is because we want to show the similarity between the concert and opera music of Europe to what those composers were writing in Hollywood," Hanson said. "All of them were classically trained. For example, Korngold was a favorite of (Gustav) Mahler's. Mahler heard him play when he was very young, and the Violin Concerto, which was premiered by Jascha Heifetz, was dedicated to (Mahler's wife) Alma."

The "Exiles in Hollywood Festival" is the sixth annual installment in the ESO's spring "Exploring Our American Voice" artistic initiative, encompassing a series of concerts and related humanities programs. "It's the last festival that we've planned in this series, but I don't know if we've ruled out the possibility of resuming it in the future," Hanson said.

Joining the April 30-May 2 Classics Series concerts will be Dorothy Lamb Crawford, author of the recent book "A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler's Émigrés and Exiles in Southern California," the story of the musicians and composers who fled central and Eastern Europe during the early years of the Third Reich, many finding work in Hollywood. Crawford will give the ESO's preconcert discussions, 45 minutes before each concert, and she will sign copies of her book in the lobby during intermission and after the concerts.

Tickets for the April 16-18 Pops Series concerts are $25 to $65, and for the April 30-May 2 Classics Series concerts $15 to $63. Visit elginsymphony.org, or call the ESO box office at (847) 888-4000. Groups of 10 or more qualify for discounted tickets - check with a box office representative for more details.