Fest has Dvorak at the Center

Young Chang

Cellist Allison Eldredge can name three men who have played leading

roles in her life: composer Antonin Dvorak, composer Victor Herbert and

conductor/cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.

With the Pacific Symphony Orchestra’s “Dvorak in America” festival,

which began Wednesday, Eldredge and her influences are tangled in a

complicated musical web in which all roads lead to Dvorak.

One of the first cello recordings Eldredge fell in love with was a

duet by Rostropovich and fellow cellist Jacqueline du Pre. Rostropovich

is widely known for his performance of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B

Minor, which Eldredge liked as a child and watched live when Rostropovich

performed it with the Boston Symphony last year.

Dvorak was inspired to write his famous cello concerto after hearing

Herbert’s Concerto No. 2 in E minor for Cello and Orchestra in the 1890s.

He and Herbert were both leaders and friends at New York’s National

Conservatory of Music. Herbert’s music apparently revealed for Dvorak how

virtuosic the cello could sound.

Eldredge will perform Herbert’s concerto Wednesday and Thursday as

part of the symphony’s nine-day celebration of Dvorak’s work, other

composers’ influence on his music and his influence on modern composers.

Rostropovich performed Dvorak’s cello concerto, Opus 104 onWednesday

at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in a concert that also

celebrated his 75th birthday.

“It’s certainly, in my mind, the greatest cello concerto that we have

in the cello repertoire,” said Eldredge, a Boston resident and New York

native. “Every time I’ve heard it, I’ve loved it even more.”

As a cellist, Eldredge has a soft spot for Dvorak’s cello concert,

which Rostropovich played in an otherworldly way in Boston.

“I didn’t think he could be more majestic than his recordings, but he

took the audience to a whole new world with his playing,” Eldredge said.

She and Rostropovich go way back. As a 9-year-old listening to his

recordings, she knew she wanted to make the cello sound as beautiful as

he did. At age 12, she got to meet and play for him impromptu at the

Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Over the years, the two cellists

performed together a number of times around the country.

The story of Eldredge’s origins with the cello is just as fated.

Since the age of 3, the acclaimed cellist was actually known in her

family as a pianist. She came from a musical family of many pianists, and

her parents felt strongly that she should stick with the instrument.

At age 9, she ran away from home, albeit for a day, and insisted after

returning that she wanted to join the string orchestra at school.

Her parents, willing to agree after the runaway incident, took her to

a violin shop to buy her a violin. There were none left. Eldredge had a

choice between the bass and the cello. The former was too big, so she

went with the latter.

“I had found the instrument that described my character and I could

relate with, and I could express my voice through it really well,”

Eldredge said.

The Dvorak festival continues today with a concert titled “Dvorak and

the American Indian,” which will highlight how Native American folk music

influenced the Bohemian composer.

Sunday, a program titled “Dvorak and Plantation Song” will show how

African American spirituals influenced Dvorak’s works.

Wednesday’s concerts will close the festival with a performance of

“Dvorak’s New World,” Eldredge playing Herbert’s concerto and

contemporary composer George Chadwick presenting his own work, which was

influenced by Dvorak.

“We’re trying to, every year, do a festival either about an American

composer or someone who was influential in the American classical music

world. This time it’s Dvorak,” said Chris Trela, symphony spokesman.

In Bohemia, Dvorak’s music was influenced by folk and traditional

music. Leading American musicians during the turn of the 20th century

hoped that by bringing Dvorak to the States, he would inspire American

composers to integrate more folk and traditional music in their

compositions.

“A lot of what they wanted to influence music was American spiritual

music and also Native American music and plantation music,” Trela said.

Through spending some years in America -- including time in Iowa among

Czech Americans -- Dvorak himself was influenced by traditional North

American spirituals and Indian motifs.

“The ‘New World’ symphony is almost a musical story of how he felt

about America and what he saw in America,” Trela said. “There’s portions

of the music that makes it seem you’re on a prairie and the wind blowing.

It really evokes image of what America was like at the turn of the 20th

century.”

FYI

* What: “Dvorak and the American Indian”

* When: 3 p.m. today

* Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Founders Hall, 600

Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

* Cost: $20 or $10

* Call: (714) 755-5799

* What: “Dvorak and Plantation Song”

* When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday

* Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Founders Hall, 600

Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

* Cost: $20 or $10

* Call: (714) 755-5799

* What: “Dvorak’s New World”

* When: 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday

* Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Segerstrom Hall, 600

Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

* Cost: $21-$56

* Call: (714) 755-5799