Stanford Symphony Orchestra tours France and Monaco

In its first performances beyond Stanford’s campus in seven years, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra under the direction of music director Paul Phillips brought the music of America to six venues across France and Monaco. The programs combined favorites of the American and French canons, including compositions by George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, John Williams, Adolphus Hailstork, Darius Milhaud, and Hector Berlioz. Artist-in-residence Christopher Costanza joined the tour as soloist on Saint-Saëns’s eternal Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor.

The tour began in earnest on Sunday, June 16; many graduating students traveled directly from their commencement ceremonies to the airport to catch a direct flight to Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport. The first concerts were held in Versailles, a stone’s throw from the famous palace, and in Lyon’s Salle de Bourse du Travail, where the symphony was joined by brass students from the conservatory of Lyon. A special chamber music concert in Annonay (home of inventor Marc Séguin) featured wind and string ensembles, including the France premiere of Anthony Burgess’s In memoriam Princess Grace.

The following week, the symphony ventured to the south of France, performing in the Arles suburb of Fourques and at the Conservatoire de Nice, joined by Thierry Muller, the conservatory’s director, who guest conducted Berlioz’s Hungarian March. On the tour’s final day, SSO performed at the Auditorium Rainier III in Monte Carlo. Fittingly, the program included Anthony Burgess’s In memoriam Princess Grace, which Burgess, a resident of Monaco, had composed there in memory of his friend, Princess Grace, shortly after her fatal automobile accident in 1982. Princess Grace who was the wife of Prince Rainier III, for whom the concert hall was named.