{"id":4725,"date":"2012-03-07T06:24:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T06:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/katia-popov-for-the-heart\/"},"modified":"2012-03-07T06:24:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T06:24:00","slug":"katia-popov-for-the-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/katia-popov-for-the-heart","title":{"rendered":"Katia Popov: For The Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

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10:40am | <\/strong>This Saturday at 8 PM, the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Maestro Enrique Arturo Diemecke, takes the stage of the Terrace Theater to present Vienna Nights. The show opens with two of the delightful Slavic Dances by Anton\u00edn Dvor\u00e1k, and closes with Franz Schubert’s Great C Major symphony. In the middle, Bulgarian born violinist Katia Popov will join the orchestra for a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, which is generally regarded as the greatest violin concerto of the Romantic era, and perhaps of all time. <\/p>\n

In addition to having permanent seats with the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Katia serves as Concertmaster of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. She is also a founder of the California String Quartet. She’s worked with premiere orchestras across Europe and the United States, has performed on hundreds of movie soundtracks, and has earned awards and accolades galore. She also sports a PhD from UCLA. <\/p>\n

I asked Katia about her childhood, and how she came to play music. It turns out that she’s a prodigy. <\/p>\n

“My dad,” Katia said, “was a principal oboe of the Sofia Radio Orchestra and my mom had the most beautiful voice. So there was always music at the house. I loved going to rehearsals with my dad and loved looking at the violins in the orchestra. I had two wooden sticks and pretended that I played the fiddle, until they were convinced that they should get me a real violin. I was four at the time. <\/p>\n

“I just loved making music. It was a kind of play for me. I loved drawing and learning new pieces. It was part of my life. I had no idea how nerve wracking it can be. Eventually, I realized that, no matter how much you practice, it’s never perfect and it is never enough. It can always be better. There is no end. <\/p>\n

“I wish I could store my practicing in an iCloud,” Katia confessed, “but you have to constantly work hard on your craft and, if you miss one day, it will take two days to get back what you missed. You can never stop and think, “Oh, I’ve got it! I am so good.” Never!!! I always ask people what they didn’t like in the performance, so I can learn from my shortcomings.” <\/p>\n

I asked her about the artistic challenges. <\/p>\n

“That you can not learn,” said Katia. “You can be coached on it, advised on it, but if you are not born with it, it will always be untrue, and people can sense that. This is what I love about the violin. It is for the heart. And that is why I am looking forward to the performance of the Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto this Saturday. As the great German violinist Joseph Joachim said, it is one of the four great German concertos and it is the most inward, and the heart’s jewel!” <\/p>\n

I asked Katia how she keeps her performances fresh. <\/p>\n

“Great music is always fresh,” she explained. “No performance of it is ever the same. Just like listening the the Beatles – you can listen to it forever because it is genius. It has this ‘G’ factor that is unexplainable and makes you feel great.” <\/p>\n

— <\/p>\n

Tickets, and information about this and other performances by the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, can be found at LBSO.org<\/a>. <\/p>\n

To learn more about Katia, visit KatiaPopov.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A wealth of information about these and other composers can be found on Wikipedia.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Violinist Katia Popov will be the featured soloist this Saturday in the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra’s Vienna Nights concert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":69786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4725"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4725"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}