5 Continuing a Michigan summer tradition, the DSO returns to Meadow Brook Music Festival/Or a five-week series of weekend concerts. SUZANNE CHESSLER Special to the Jewish News he Detroit Symphony Orchestra has. tuned in to the nature of its summer audiences and set up three varieties of weekend concerts this season at Meadow Brook Music Festival. "Family Fun Fridays," geared to both families and newcomers to classical music, offer lighter classical fare topped off by fireworks; "Sensational Saturday Classics" feature classical masterworks and prominent soloists; and "Sunday Summer Pops" contain a diverse lineup aimed at fans of popular music. Friday and Saturday concerts begin at 8 p.m. and Sunday concerts begin at 7:30 p.m. The outdoor shows include stellar guest artists who have performed at Orchestra Hall at other times of the year. Violinist Pinchas Zukerman, pops composer-pianist-singer Burt Bacharach and pianist Matthew Herskowitz will be among the featured performers. Pianist Vladimir Feltsman, a Russian refusenik who came to America in 1987 and had his New York debut at Carnegie Hall, helps get the series off the ground as part of the first concert of the series, "Opening Fanfare." He plays a Mozart concerto in a program that includes selections by Copland, Tower, Bizet and Britten. The concert con- cludes with a colorful fireworks display. "If you cannot enjoy Mozart, then what can you enjoy?" asks Feltsman, who will perform Piano Concerto No. 23. "I am playing one of the most joy- ful pieces Mozart ever wrote with very beautiful, slow movements. "The program is very summery with mostly 20th-century music, and to put some Mozart inside it will be quite delightful. It's not a usual, acade- mic program for a classical concert. It's an outdoors, anything-goes, have-a- good-time program." Although Feltsman will be per- forming with conductor Marin Alsop, he has shared the stage with DSO conductor Neeme Jarvi. "I used to work with Neeme Jarvi quite a bit when he used to be in Russia 7/2 1999 82 Detroit Jewish News Left: Vladimir Feltsman peiforms Mozart's "Piano Concerto No. 23" on Friday, July Top right: Marin Alsop conducts the DSO's opening weekend concerts at Meadow Brook Music Festive Bottom right: Burt Bacharach performs his hits, accompanied by the DSO, on Sunday, July 1 and I used to be in Russia," recalled Feltsman, who travels extensively both in the United States and Europe. With two parents who performed classical music, Feltsman seemed a natural for the piano. "I liked to practice," says the musician, 47, who plays at a Steinway in his own studio. "My mother was my first teacher, and I just worked my way through and enjoyed it most of the time." Feltsman made his concert debut at age 12 with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. His first prize in the 1967 Concertina International Competition in Prague led to his enrollment in the Moscow Conservatory, and four years later, he won the prestigious Marguerite Long Competition in Paris. During the next 15 years, he toured extensively throughout Russia and Eastern Europe, but his career was abruptly interrupted when Soviet authorities responded to his applica- tion to emigrate by banning him fron performing in public. "I found myself in line with many thousands of so-called refuseniks, Jewi people who wanted to leave Russia V couldn't get a visa," Feltsman explains. "These people suffered quite a bit of discrimination, and I got my share. Fe eight years, I was basically unable to work, but that was long ago. I don't have any bitterness toward my mothe land. I wish [the people] well."