REVIEW: SummerFest opens 40th season with a history-celebrating all-star concert

George Varga
San Diego Union-Tribune

August 2, 2026

La Jolla Music Society’s chamber-music-and-beyond festival continues through Aug. 29 with 20 more ticketed concerts and 50 free events

No one belted out “Happy Birthday To You” at the all-star opening concert of the 40th annual edition of La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest. But the most popular song of the past century did not go unheard during the Friday performance, which was whimsically billed as “The Incomplete History of the World in Ten Pieces.”

At the conclusion of the sold-out concert at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center’s Baker-Baum Concert Hall, 14 of the night’s performers played eight of German violinist and composer Peter Heidrich’s 15 “Happy Birthday Variations.”

Each was essayed in the distinct style of a storied composer, including Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms and Dvorak. The variations culminated with a spirited Hungarian czardas version of “Happy Birthday” — animatedly led by Canadian-born violinist Blake Pouliot — that had the audience enthusiastically clapping along.

It was a charming and suitably celebratory summation of the concert’s ambitious theme, which SummerFest Music Director Inon Barnatan devised with several goals in mind.

“The theme, ‘Making History,’ came partly because I wanted to acknowledge the anniversary of the festival and the anniversary of the United States,” Barnatan explained in a July 26 San Diego Union-Tribune interview. “And I wanted to acknowledge both how the history of the world has shaped music and vice versa, but also how we keep on making history every day and at every SummerFest.”

Achieving that goal with just 10 pieces was no easy task, as Barnatan’s “incomplete” concert billing designation attested. But Friday’s performance did span nearly a millennium, from Hildegard von Bingen’s 1151 antiphon, O virtus Sapientiaec (O Virtue of Wisdom) to Barnatan’s new arrangement of “America” from Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s classic 1957 musical, “West Side Story.”

In between came eight other selections. They ranged from Thomas Morley’s “It Was a Lover and His Lass” — a vocal and lute air written around 1600 and based on a poem by William Shakespeare in “As You Like It” — to Largo, the third movement from Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 67, which premiered in war-torn Russia in 1944.

“Lass” was one of two numbers featuring the splendid countertenor Reginald Mobley, who opened the evening performing von Bingen’s O virtus Sapientiaec with cellist Eliana Razzino Yang. His luminous singing and Yang’s spare but stately cello accompaniment made for an inspired pairing.

So did Mobley’s rendition of the lilting madrigal “Lass,” which he performed with lutist Alejandro Jenné. Mobley’s voice danced with equal delight whether delivering wonderfully high trills or singing “When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding,” a 17th-century pop hit-worthy refrain. (“Lass” has since been interpreted by such disparate artists as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Cleo Laine Maxine Sullivan and Don McLean.)

Jenné performed on baroque guitar as part of the octet that expertly delivered a suitably spirited rendition of the Presto section of Summer, the second movement from Vivaldi’s violin concerti The Four Seasons. A showcase for violinist Stefan Jackiw, who negotiated even the most accelerated lines with deep expressivity, nimble ease and impressive clarity, the Presto was equally notable for the seamless playing by the entire ensemble.

The Overture from Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni” was presented with a twist. The five musicians who played it had not rehearsed together and sight read the piece, although their overall precision and dynamic command suggested each of them had performed it in other settings.

The sublime cellist Alisa Weilerstein was memorably featured in three pieces, as well as during the “Happy Birthday” finale. The first was Cavatina, the fifth movement from Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat major, Op. 130.

Together with violist Masumi Rostad and violinists Jackiw and Karen Gomyo, Weilerstein achieved an aching poignancy. Cavatina is a marvel of finely wrought nuance that begins and ends in a near-whisper as it brings to life an intense sense of desolation that is both gripping and, ultimately, cathartic.

Weilerstein, Gomyo, Pouliot and Rostad returned with violist Ayano Nakamura and cellist Sterling Elliot to perform Sebastian Guertler’s 2013 arrangement of the Overture from Wagner’s 1865 opera, “Tristan und Isolde.” Their finely calibrated performance built slowly and steadily to a tremulous crescendo before ending in a hush.

Weilerstein also shined brightly on Shostakovich’s Largo, which teamed her with Barnatan on piano and Gomyo on violin. A haunting elegy for the more than 2 million Russians who died during the Nazi siege of Leningrad, Largo requires exceptional sensitivity and restraint, and Weilerstein, Barnatan and Gomyi handily rose to the occasion.

Barnatan teamed for two pieces with fellow pianist George Li and both were standouts. Sharing the same keyboard for a four-handed excerpt from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and for Barnatan’s newly arranged take on “America” from “West Side Story,” the two pianists played with stunning elan from first note to last.

Barnatan performed the primo (or right hand) parts and Li the secondo (or left hand) parts for the Stravinsky, which featured unison chords, syncopated stop-go accents and darting call-and-response accents. They reversed the primo and secondo roles for their sparkling version of “America,” which at one point found Li taking his hands off the keyboard so that he could clap rhythmic punctuations as Barnatan played on.

The concert was narrated by the convivial Fred Child of American Public Media, who added informative historical context about each piece and several timely asides advocating for the support of arts and culture.

“When a city invested in culture,” Child said in his spoken introduction to Vivaldi’s Presto, “music became a driver of economic prosperity — a lesson for our times.”