YSO to feature pianist Sakata

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown Symphony Orchestra and music director Randall Craig Fleischer will kick off the symphony’s 88th anniversary season Saturday with a classical concert featuring Tomoki Sakata, a recent Van Cliburn International Piano Competition finalist.

The concert starts at 8 p.m. at Powers Auditorium. For tickets, call the box office at 330-744-0264 or go to youngstownsymphony.com.

The youngest competitor at the Van Cliburn, which took place in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2013, Sakata is also a prize winner at various competitions throughout Asia and Europe and has appeared in concert in Osaka, Tokya and Yokohama as well as Geneva, Lugano, Paris, Prague, Utrecht and Moscow.

Sakata also has performed as a soloist with the Fort Worth Symphony, Hamamatsu Symphony, Lubrin Philharmonic and Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra.

Born in Nagoya, Japan, Sakata began piano lessons at age 5. He enrolled in the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music in 2012 and also attends the International Piano Academy Lake Como.

Sakata will perform the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini.

The theme on which the Rhapsody is based is taken from the last of Paganini Caprices for solo violin and was written in the summer of 1934 when the composer was living on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. It was given its first performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra in Baltimore in 1934 with the composer as the soloist.

The program will conclude with the Dvorak “New World Symphony.”

The symphony, with its generous use of Negro spiritual and Native American folk music, has ranked high in popular favor since its premiere with the New York Philharmonic in 1893. It is during the famous second movement that the audience will be reminded of the symphony’s kinship to the Negro spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

While in residence in Youngstown, Sakata presented informal concerts with Fleischer at the Jewish Community Center and Shepherd of the Valley Retirement Community in Poland.

The YSO Chamber Orchestra and Fleischer will present the first Stained Glass Concert Series program of the season at 7 p.m. Sunday at the Old North Church, 7105 Herbert Road, Canfield. The informal free concerts are open to the public.