Cal Symphony closes season with a starry-starry world premiere

The California Symphony is finishing its 2022-23 season on a high note, with a new work that looks to the stars.

“Stargazer,” the latest work by Viet Cuong, the Symphony’s Young American Composer in Residence, receives its world premiere this weekend under music director Donato Cabrera, with pianist Sarah Cahill as soloist.

The program, which also includes Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival” and William Walton’s Symphony No. 1, will be performed Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon at Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center as the final concerts of the Symphony’s 2022-23 season.

“Stargazer” is a significant new work for the organization; Cuong, who was named the Symphony’s composer in residence in 2020, has been the recipient of commissions far and wide.

In a call from his home in Las Vegas, he said that “Stargazer” has an unusual perspective. “It is a piano concerto, and it does have a kind of nocturnal atmosphere to it, with kind of a luminous, sparkly sound,” he said.

That sound was essential to Cuong, who’s been described by the New York Times as “a leading light of the new-music piano scene.”

“The piano and orchestra use a kind of sound I’ve been working on, using delay and doing it acoustically,” said the composer, who was born in Southern California and raised near Atlanta, Georgia. “The result is almost as if Sarah’s the stargazer and the orchestra’s the telescope.”

Cahill, whose work in new music has earned accolades around the world, has become one of the composer’s biggest fans since hearing one of his compositions in New York.

“I went to Carnegie Hall last year — it was a new music concert with American Composers Orchestra — and I was hearing a lot of pieces,” she explained. “Then there was one exciting, dazzling composition that just blew everything out of the water, and that was his percussion concerto. It was one of those moments when you feel you’re in the presence of the next generation’s phenomenal new composer.”

Pianist Sarah Cahill describes Viet Cuong’s new work as “very beautiful and challenging, and very virtuosic.” (Christine Alicino/Courtesy of Sarah Cahill)

When she received the score for “Stargazer,” Cahill, who lives in Berkeley and teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, says she was impressed by the piece from the first read-through.

“I thought it was very beautiful and challenging, and very virtuosic,” she said. “The piano has these sorts of rapid figurations through the whole score, and a melodic line that emulates what the orchestra is doing.

“It’s a very exciting piece, and it’s exciting to play. It’s speedy. I think the audience is going to love it. Viet has such a strong vision for what he wants to do with the orchestra. He seems to have a very clear path, and this is an example of that.”

Cahill was so intrigued by the score, she flew to Las Vegas to rehearse the work with Cuong — who says their work together “was such a gift — and a testament to her commitment to new music.”

Cuong’s tenure at the California Symphony’s residency program coincided with the start of the Covid pandemic; as concerts around the world were being cancelled, he said, he used the time to work and compose new music.

“In the years before, I’d been writing a lot of optimistic, playful music,” he recalled. “My music during Covid became more contemplative. I was trying to find solace.”

His first composition for the symphony was “Next Week’s Trees,” which premiered in a virtual performance in May 2021. Donato and the orchestra will perform the world premiere of the composer’s “Chance of Rain” this fall.

“Stargazer,” which takes its title from a poem by Mary Oliver, recalls those early days of the pandemic, when no one was sure what would happen next. Oliver’s writing, he says, spoke to him at a crucial time.

“It’s still contemplative, but it’s also complex,” he said. “It kind of captured what we were all going through, what we had been taking for granted. Trying to find solace, we’ve all found ways to adapt. I found a lot of inspiration in that poem.”

Contact Georgia Rowe at growe@pacbell.net.