Classic & Eclectic

Composer Gustav Mahler once said that a symphony should be an “entire world.”

When Santa Rosa Symphony Music Director Bruno Ferrandis takes the podium next weekend to kick off his third season, the conductor plans to bring an entire world of music to his listeners, including several pieces never performed here before.

“I am sweeping and renewing the repertoire,” Ferrandis said during an interview last month. “I don’t leave the classical behind ... but I’m trying to encompass a large spectrum.”

During the 2008-2009 subscription season, the symphony will perform works from every conceivable corner of the music repertoire: romantic to atonal, classical to modernist, Bernstein to Bach.

“I’m specializing in not being a specialist,” Ferrandis said with an impish grin.

The French conductor has attracted some exciting new talent to play with the symphony this season as well. All of the instrumental soloists, with the exception of the orchestra’s pianist, are playing with the Santa Rosa Symphony for the first time.

Throughout the season, audiences will be introduced to some exotic new sounds and instruments. Next weekend, Bela Bartok’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” will feature shimmery percussion and the chiming of the celesta, a musical instrument instrument that resembles a piano but sounds like a music box or glockenspiel.

“It’s a breakthrough piece, for timbre and texture,” Ferrandis said.

During the final concert set, the audience will get a rare chance to hear Olivier Messiaen’s flamboyant “Turangalila” Symphony, which calls for a massive orchestra along with the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument.

“It’s an electric keyboard that creates a wave of sound, with a sustained timbre,” Ferrandis said.

In keeping with his goals to integrate other art forms, Ferrandis has included a work from Richard Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” opera, selections from Sergei Prokofiev’s “Cinderella” ballet and “Lontano” by Gyorgy Ligeti. Ligeti wrote music for several Stanley Kubrick films, including “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“In the next season, I will extend even more into the theater, song and dance,” Ferrandis said. “I don’t want to be fitting into the ivory tower, but to extend our reach.”

Here are highlights of the subscription season of the Santa Rosa Symphony, which includes seven concert sets running next weekend through May 18. Ferrandis leads every program except the January set.

The concerts are held at 8 p.m. Saturdays and repeated at 3 p.m. Sundays and 8 p.m. Mondays at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. Single tickets are $27-$50. 546-8742.

Oct. 18, 19, 20: The season begins on a traditional note with Ludwig van Beethoven’s beloved Violin Concerto in D Major, performed on a 1690 Stradivarius violin by Vadim Gluzman. Last spring, the Russian-Israeli violinist made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony to rave reviews.

“He was wonderful,” Ferrandis said.

Sandwiched between Beethoven’s Leonore Overture and the violin concerto is Bartok’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta,” written in 1936. Though stylistically different, Bartok and Beethoven share structural roots.

“They are both about form and counterpoint,” Ferrandis said. “It’s about the architecture.”

Nov. 8, 19, 10: This program, based around history, defines three eras of Middle Europe (the region around Vienna, Budapest and Prague) with works by Franz Schubert, Alban Berg and Ligeti.

“Ligeti just died, and I had to have something in his memory,” Ferrandis said. “Berg worked in Vienna during the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Schubert worked during the heyday of the empire.”

In addition, Ferrandis shares some history with guest violinist Gilles Apap, a childhood friend from Nice who will perform the Berg Violin Concerto.

“We are like brothers,” Ferrandis said. “Like (violinists) Mark O’Connor and Nigel Kennedy, he is one of the most universal players. He also does gypsy, Celtic music and Indian ragas.”

Dec. 13, 14, 15: To honor the 200th anniversary of Haydn’s death, Ferrandis programmed two very different pieces: Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 94, “Surprise” — a whimsical work — alongside Haydn’s “Mass for troubled times,” a more serious work written for orchestra, choir and four solo vocalists.

“The concert falls around Christmas, and the tradition is to do an oratorio,” Ferrandis said. “I like that tradition.”

The program also showcases one of the orchestra’s unsung heroes, pianist Kymry Esainko, performing the Piano Concerto in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Jan. 24, 25, 26: This program is built around two American composers who were close friends — Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein — and their legacy.

“Bernstein made a point of passing the baton to the new generation,” Ferrandis said. “He has been important to so many artists.”

The program includes Copland’s pastoral Symphony No. 3 and Bernstein’s elegiac “Halil,” featuring American flutist Carol Wincenc.

Rounding out the program is a new work, “Carnaval for Orchestra” by Roberto Sierra, commissioned by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Kathryn Gould’s Magnum Opus project. Gould commissioned nine composers to create nine new orchestral works to be performed by three Bay Area orchestras: the Santa Rosa Symphony, Marin Sympony and the Oakland East Bay Symphony. Guest conductor David Lockington will lead.

Feb. 21, 22, 23: This mid-winter program is all about the night, as seen and heard through the minds of four very different composers.

Pianist Garrick Ohlsson, an international chamber musician and soloist based in San Francisco, will perform two virtuosic pieces: Carl Maria von Weber’s Konzertstuck and Manuel De Falla’s “Nights in the Garden of Spain.”

“Garrick Ohlsson is a monument in this country, and he is daring,” Ferrandis said. “He was the only pianist who would consent to play the De Falla.”

Rounding out the program is Arnold Schoenberg’s luscious and melodic “Transfigured Night” and Claude Debussy’s colorful “Nocturnes,” featuring the Bach Choir.

April 18, 19, 20: This program revolves around three Russian composers who were intimate friends — Aram Khachaturian, Sergei Prokofiev and Nikolai Miaskovsky — and the rarely heard Miaskovsky cello concerto performed by cellist Gary Hoffman.

“He’s from a brilliant American family,” Ferrandis said. “I played with him in Spain. He’s on a caliber with Yo-Yo Ma.”

The concerto is bookended by Khachaturian’s Three pieces from “Gayane” and Prokofiev’s Selections from “Cinderella.”

May 16, 17, 18: The final concert program is a musical tribute to transcendent love.

“It’s about love and religious feelings and mysticism,” Ferrandis said. “Those feelings are rarely felt these days.”

The dissonance of Messiaen’s “Turangallia” Symphony will serve as a foil for the lyricism of Wagner’s “Nachtgesang” from “Tristan and Isolde” and Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, performed by pianist Cecile Licad.

“Cecile Licad is a prodigious pianist,” Ferrandis said. “She’s a beautiful player ... she’s flawless.”

You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com