 |
 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(November 2021) |
The California Chamber Symphony (CCS) was an orchestra based at Royce Hall, University of California, Los Angeles. It was founded by violinist and conductor Henri Temianka in 1960 and was the first true chamber orchestra in Los Angeles.
In 1958 the noted violinist and conductor Henri Temianka founded the Beverly Hills Concerts for Youth. Works such as ‘’Peter and the Wolf’’ and Saint-Saëns’ ‘’Carnival of the Animals’’ were performed, with celebrity participants including Ray Bradbury, Victor Borge, Hans Conreid, Peter Ustinov and Sam Jaffe donating their services as narrators. In Benjamin Britten’s opera ‘’Noye’s Fludde’’, children from the audience participated. The orchestra also gave special concerts at Juvenile Hall and for the disabled.
Initially called “The Temianka Little Symphony,” [1] in 1960 the orchestra became the California Chamber Symphony. [2] It was the first true chamber orchestra in Los Angeles. [2] While based at Royce Hall, UCLA, the group toured the United States and Canada extensively, as well as Hong Kong, and was featured in special television programs on KCET and KNBC.
The orchestra gave over 100 concerts during a span of some three decades. In addition to the baroque and classical literature, the CCS performed major works by such famous modern composers as Aaron Copland, Darius Milhaud, Dmitri Shostakovich, Malcolm Arnold and Carlos Chavez; many of these were West Coast premieres. In 1962 the great violinist David Oistrakh performed the Beethoven, the Brahms and the Bach E Major concertos with the CCS, and as an encore joined Temianka to play the Bach ‘’Double Concerto’’. Other soloists who appeared with the CCS under Temianka’s direction included Jean-Pierre Rampal, Henryk Szeryng, Leonard Pennario and Benny Goodman. Temianka once joined violist William Primrose to perform Mozart’s ‘’Sinfonia Concertante’’, and on another occasion played viola in that piece with Isaac Stern.
Temianka broke with tradition by speaking to his audiences from the stage about the music and composers. At one of the orchestra's first concerts, music critics in the audience walked out. For this reason the concert series was titled “Let’s Talk Music” for some years. He was responsible for the first appearances of many rising musicians such as Christopher Parkening, Jeffrey Kahane, Nathaniel Rosen, Timothy Landauer and Daniel Heifetz, and sponsored the Romero family of four guitarists from Spain (The Romero Guitar Quartet). In later years the California Chamber Virtuosi, an offshoot of the CCS in 1976, gave concerts at the J. Paul Getty museum in Malibu, at Pepperdine University, and at the Taper Forum in Los Angeles. The City and County of Los Angeles repeatedly issued proclamations honoring the CCS. Its last performance was given on Sunday, December 9, 1990. [3] In 2022 a graduating student from Chapman University, Mitchell Tanaka, placed Temianka's pioneering contributions in historical perspective in his production "Temianka Talks Music." .
Isaac Stern was an American violinist.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish orchestral conductor and composer. He is principal conductor and artistic advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and music director of the San Francisco Symphony.
Sarah Chang is a Korean American classical violinist. Recognized as a child prodigy, she first played as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1989. She enrolled at Juilliard School to study music, graduated in 1999, and continued university studies. Especially during the 1990s and early to mid-2000s, Chang had major roles as a soloist with many of the world's major orchestras.
Midori Goto, who performs under the mononym Midori, is a Japanese-born American violinist. She made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11 as a surprise guest soloist at the New Year's Eve Gala in 1982. In 1986 her performance at the Tanglewood Music Festival with Leonard Bernstein conducting his own composition made the front-page headlines in The New York Times. Midori became a celebrated child prodigy, and one of the world's preeminent violinists as an adult.
Hilary Hahn is an American violinist. She has performed throughout the world as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors and as a recitalist. She is an avid supporter of contemporary classical music, and several composers have written works for her, including concerti by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, partitas by Antón García Abril, two serenades for violin and orchestra by Einojuhani Rautavaara, and a violin and piano sonata by Lera Auerbach.
The Paganini Quartet was an American string quartet founded by cellist Robert Maas and violinist Henri Temianka in 1946. The quartet drew its name from the fact that all four of its instruments, made by Antonio Stradivari (1644–1737), had once been owned by the great Italian violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini (1782–1840).
Ilya Kaler is a Russian-born violinist. Born and educated in Moscow, Kaler is the only person to have won Gold Medals at all three of the International Tchaikovsky Competition ; the Sibelius ; and the Paganini.
James Zuill Bailey, better known as Zuill Bailey is a Grammy Award-winning American cellist, chamber musician, and artistic director. A graduate of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and the Juilliard School, he has appeared with major orchestras internationally. He is a professor of cello at the University of Texas at El Paso. Bailey has an exclusive international recording contract with the Telarc label.
Richard Leo Tognetti AO is a leading Australian musician recognised internationally as a violin soloist, ensemble player, leader, composer and arranger, conductor and artistic director.
Glenn Dicterow, is an American violinist and former concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He is on the faculty of The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music, as well as a faculty artist at the Music Academy of the West, following three years of participation in Music Academy Summer Festivals. He also holds the Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music.
Augustin Hadelich is an Italian-German-American Grammy-winning classical violinist.
Royce Hall is a building on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Designed by the Los Angeles firm of Allison & Allison and completed in 1929, it is one of the four original buildings on UCLA's Westwood campus and has come to be the defining image of the university. The brick and tile building is in the Lombard Romanesque style, and once functioned as the main classroom facility of the university and symbolized its academic and cultural aspirations. Today, the twin-towered front remains the best known UCLA landmark. The 1800-seat auditorium was designed for speech acoustics and not for music; by 1982 it emerged from successive remodelings as a regionally important concert hall and main performing arts facility of the university.
Armen Anassian holds master's degrees in Instrumental Conducting and Violin Performance, and studied in the United States, Armenia, and Germany. His teachers include Rainer Kussmaul, Sidney Weiss, Dorothy DeLay, and conductor Michael Zearott. Mr. Anassian has held Conducting and/or Concertmaster positions with such noted groups as the Hoboken Chamber Orchestra, Freiburg Chamber Orchestra, Heidelberg Chamber Orchestra and the Zelt Musik Festival Orchestra. In Los Angeles he has been Concertmaster/Guest Concertmaster with Pacific Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, California Philharmonic, Pasadena Pops, Burbank Symphony, Riverside Philharmonic, Inland Empire Symphony, Long Beach Symphony, Glendale Symphony, Symphony in the Glen and the Los Angeles Opera.
Allan Vogel is an American oboist and educator. He was the former Principal Oboe of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.
Olli Mustonen is a Finnish pianist, conductor, and composer.
Jeffrey Alan Kahane is an American classical concert pianist and conductor. He was music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for 20 years, the longest of any music director in the orchestra's history. He is the music director of the Sarasota Music Festival, a program of the Sarasota Orchestra, and a professor of keyboard studies (Piano) at the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, California
Henri Temianka was a virtuoso violinist, conductor, author and music educator.
Dylana Jenson is an American concert violinist and violin teacher. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her husband, conductor-cellist David Lockington, music director laureate of the Grand Rapids Symphony. They have four children. Jenson is the sister of Vicky Jenson, an animated film story board artist and director.
Rudolf Borisovich Barshai was a Soviet and Russian conductor and violist.
Albert Markov, is a Russian American violinist, composer, conductor, and pedagogue. He is the only concert violinist of the 20th and 21st century who composed major music works which are published, performed and recorded commercially on Sunrise label and published by G. Schirmer. During the time of the Soviet Union he was known as a prominent Soviet classical music artist. Albert Markov began his career as a concert violinist in Russia before immigrating to the United States in 1975.
