PATRICIA C. SYAK | Symphony notes Park and Warwick to debut with audience favorites

Two women of musical note will make their Youngstown Symphony Orchestra debuts in the coming weeks.
Violinist Tricia Park performs the Paganini First Violin Concerto with the orchestra and conductor Isaiah Jackson on Nov. 22, and five-time Grammy Award-winner Dionne Warwick performs Dec. 6.
Both performances at the Edward W. Powers Auditorium begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are on sale now by calling the Symphony Center box office at (330) 744-0264.
Paganini's charm
Truly a fabulous individual, Paganini excited the curiosity of all who saw this pitifully thin and gaunt man of music. He exercised a magical influence over everyone who came in slightest contact with him. His bony fingers seemed to stretch from one end of the violin fingerboard to the other, and it was asserted that without such a length of finger he could never have played the passages he was known to have executed.
Some said, "The devil was at his elbow." And Paganini, who knew how to capitalize on any situation once, publicized a letter from his mother disproving the rumor that he was the devil's son.
Generally regarded as the greatest violinist of all times, Paganini so jealously guarded his technical secrets that he published only a few of his compositions. Rising young violinist Youngstown-born Tricia Park performs the First Violin Concerto by Paganini: a dazzling showpiece with a catalog of daredevil feats.
Recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, Park has performed at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, with the orchestras of Cincinnati, Seattle and Naples (Florida) and chamber music with members of the American, Guarneri and Juilliard String Quartets.
Other selections to be heard on the Italian program, underwritten in part by Ricciuti Balog & amp; Partners Architects, are Rossini's William Tell Overture, Verdi's La forza del destino Overture and Respighi's Pines of Rome.
Sounds of the season
The greatest hits of Bacharach and David sung by Warwick and the sounds of the season await concertgoers to the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra Pops Concert on Dec. 6, underwritten in part by Butler Wick Corp. and Line Hydraulics Corp.
Billboard magazine notes that with no fewer than 55 hit singles, the legendary Warwick is the second most charted female artist of the past 40 years.
As the voice behind a decade of classic tunes written with her in mind by the famed team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Warwick established herself as an international superstar. In all, Dionne, Burt and Hal racked up 30 hit singles and close to 20 best-selling albums during their decade of gold.
Tunes such as "Do You Know The Way To San Jose," "Message To Michael," "This Girl's In Love With You" and "I'll Never fall In Love Again" will be among the hits Warwick performs with the Youngstown Symphony.
During the first half of the concert, the orchestra under the direction of Isaiah Jackson will perform such seasonal perennials as Fantasia on "Greensleeves" and Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride."
XPatricia C. Syak is executive director of the Youngstown Symphony Society.