Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony with the Columbia (MD) Orchestra

It's a few days later and I'm still thinking about the Columbia Orchestra performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection" on Saturday night. It's my favorite Mahler symphony and one that I don't get to hear in concert that often. It calls for a massive orchestra with offstage musicians and a chorus, and it's tremendously difficult to play and conduct. I know one of the musicians in the orchestra well (my brother) and I’ve met a few others, so I feel a bit of a personal connection to the group. Also, I know the piece inside and out, so I was attuned to every entrance, every phrase and cymbal crash. (I had a good view of the cymbal player.) It felt like a bit of a high-wire act for everyone involved. 

It was a phenomenal performance. Music Director Jason Love conducted without a score, something I dream of (but also have nightmares about). Everyone involved played beautifully. The soloists were fantastic and the chorus sang with emotion. There were a few missed notes and a couple of places where the strings rushed a bit and things threatened to pull apart just a little, but it all held together. The music had drama and excitement and the massive crescendos and climaxes were thrilling. Love's grasp of this music was clear not just from his conducting, which was precise and energetic, but also from his "behind the music" mini-lecture before the performance. He discussed the themes of the piece and illustrated them by having the orchestra play brief excerpts. Even for an experienced Mahlerian like me, it was a valuable refresher and pointed out a few things I hadn’t noticed before.

 

From the opening tremolo to the glorious E flat major chords at the end, I was engaged with the music in a way that was totally different from when I've heard this piece performed by professionals like the New York Philharmonic. Maybe it was my relationship to the orchestra, or maybe it was the high-wire feeling, or maybe it was just that I was sitting closer to the orchestra than I’ve ever sat for this piece, but it was a most exciting performance that I won't soon forget. 

Augustin Hadelich wows audiences, Manfred Honeck shines with the New York Philharmonic

I should have known it would be a great night with the New York Philharmonic. They usually play well for Manfred Honeck (music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra) and it was a stellar program of Johann Strauss, Mozart, and Brahms. The orchestra gave a spirited reading of the overture to Die Fledermaus, full of the melodies and dances that make the opera so popular. Then violinist Augustin Hadelich joined them for Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 and captivated the audience for a half hour. Hadelich's cadenzas were particularly impressive for being his own compositions and yet well suited to the concerto. I have rarely had the pleasure of hearing an artist at the beginning of his career with such control and artistry. I also enjoyed the enthusiasm of the basses and celli in the “Turkish” section of the last movement. The audience applause at the end of the concerto called for an encore. Mr. Hadelich delivered, with Paganini's Caprice No. 5 which he played with what seemed like incredible ease. His fingers flew up and down the fingerboard so fast that I could have sworn I saw wisps of smoke. I am certain that if he wanted to keep playing all night, we'd all still be there listening. 

Brahms' symphony no. 4 was the second half of the concert. Honeck led the orchestra through a dark, energetic and dramatic performance. The strings and winds sang in the second movement, and the third movement was lively and almost raucous. The passacaglia in the fourth movement brought the work to a stormy conclusion and the audience brought Honeck back out for several ovations. It was a truly impressive evening and a great end to my subscription for the season. Next up: Concerts in the Parks!

I spent my whole weekend playing Carmen with the New York Opera Exchange. We played a show on Friday, two shows on Saturday, and a closing matinee on Sunday. We played in a church social hall with no central air conditioning and a too-cramped pit for the orchestra. It was ridiculously hot and on Saturday my back hurt and on Sunday my fingers were so sweaty it was hard to play. And yet I had the time of my life. I’ve had some amazing musical experiences in New York and this one is high on the list (along with playing Mozart’s The Magic Flute in February 2014). I am incredibly lucky to get to play music like this in this city. There are times when I wonder why I’m doing this, when I’m shlepping my viola through a crowded subway car on my way to another rehearsal. I will think of weekends like this one the next time I think about saying no and sitting at home watching TV.

Bartok and Bruckner with Bronfman and Gilbert

I love Anton Bruckner's symphonies and I rarely miss a chance to hear them played by the New York Philharmonic. The Philharmonic's stellar brass section is well-suited to Bruckner's sonorous chords and powerful blasts. But Bruckner's music is dense and complicated, with long phrases and meandering melodies. It's sometimes difficult even for an enthusiast like myself to fully enjoy a performance of one of his symphonies without checking my watch or thinking about what kind of gelato I'm going to get after the concert. If the musicians aren't fully involved, or the conductor is hesitant or unsure, the piece can be long and dull and have everyone looking for the exits well before the conclusion. Happily for me and a thrilled audience, Saturday night's concert was none of these things.

Before the Bruckner, the Philharmonic and soloist Yefim Bronfman gave a light and colorful performance of Bartok's Third Piano Concerto. I'm not that familiar with Bartok's music, but I enjoyed this concerto far more than I expected. Mr. Bronfman played with a sparkling quality that reminded me more of Beethoven than a 20th century work. But this playing fit well with the tone that Maestro Gilbert elicited from the orchestra. They brought Bartok's harmonies and angular melodies together with a fully satisfying result.

But that was just an appetizer. The performance of Bruckner's 8th Symphony (my favorite) was one of the most exciting and energetic experiences I've had with this music. Maestro Gilbert and the musicians had me hanging on every note. The brass section, augmented with four Wagner tubas, led the way and balanced well with the strings and winds. The first movement was menacing at times, the scherzo bright and almost cheerful. The third movement was an emotional ride from valley to peak and back. And the finale was every bit as terrifying as I wanted it to be. I felt chills when the music built to a crescendo and brass chords and timpani drumrolls filled the hall. I didn't want the piece to come to an end, even as Bruckner moved from darkness to light. This was a performance I don't want to forget.

P.S.: I had a scoop of pistachio and a scoop of hazelnut gelato at Grom after the concert.

Nielsen night at the Philharmonic

We attended the New York Philharmonic's performance of Carl Nielsen' Symphonies 5 and 6 last night, part of their multi-year Nielsen Project. Previous concerts featured his earlier symphonies and some of his concertos. They opened the concert with Nielsen' Maskarade Overture, which was a five minute overview of everything I love about Nielsen's music. It was frenetic and melodic, with loud boisterous blasts from the brass. 

Nielsen's Symphony No. 5 reminded me more of his 4th than of his other works. Like the 4th, the 5th had frantic string passages and long brassy melodies. But it also had persistent rattles from the snare drum, threatening to disrupt the proceedings more than once. Music Director Alan Gilbert spoke before the work and said that the music evoked a battle scene. While there was obvious conflict in the score, the musicians performed brilliantly in bringing Nielsen's music to life.

Nielsen's Symphony No.6 followed after intermission. This piece, in its New York Philharmonic premiere, was one of the more idiosyncratic symphonies I've heard. The opening movement was unmistakably Nielsen, but the composer took a turn into dissonance as the work progressed. The later movements had odd harmonies and twisting melodies from the wind section. The theme and variations in the last movement were the most unusual, as the theme journeyed through the instrument families, even taking a turn in the percussion section. There was a bit of disarray within the first violin section near the end of the piece, perhaps underscoring the Philharmonic's unfamiliarity with this particular work. But it was brief and for all I know part of the piece.

The orchestra and Maestro Gilbert enjoyed long ovations after both symphonies. It's clear that audiences love Nielsen's music and this orchestra is well suited to perform it. I've bought two of the planned four recordings in the Philharmonic's Nielsen cycle, and I look forward to picking up the last two when they are released.

Also, the Philharmonic handed out free "I [love] NIELSEN" buttons, and we were all too happy to wear ours.

A rant about cell phones at the New York Philharmonic

I would love to write about how much we enjoyed the music at Friday night's performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 3 by the New York Philharmonic. We really did enjoy the music! It was sublime. But what almost marred the concert were the multiple cell phone alerts that went off during the symphony, especially in the last movement.

It had rained off and on all day. Starting at about 9:15 PM, in the middle of the symphony, we heard a faint emergency alarm noise, like the emergency broadcast system alert on TV. It was quiet so it was hard to distinguish it from the music. But when I heard another alarm a few minutes later, it was unmistakably a cell phone alert. These alerts were coming from all over the hall, but they were quiet enough that it didn't seem to reach the stage. We didn't know what was going on, but it was obvious that some people had not turned off or otherwise silenced their phones at the beginning of the concert.

In the middle of the utterly gorgeous final movement, one of these cell phone alerts went off in the row behind ours. It went quiet a few seconds later, but it was distracting. Then it went off again a few minutes later. This time, it almost caused a fight. I turned to look and the phone's owner was cursing under his breath and trying to shut off his phone. The man next to him said, above a whisper, "You have to leave! Get out! You have to leave!" To his credit, the man with the noisy phone left the hall. But it had already ruined the moment for me. I was distracted the rest of the piece, wondering if the next alert would sound close to the stage and force Mr. Haitink to stop the orchestra. Why is it always Mahler whose music is interrupted with cell phone noises? Thankfully, there were no more alarms and the symphony reached its glorious conclusion without interruption.

The alert turned out to be a flash flood warning for the metro New York area. With that many alarms going off during one of my favorite pieces, I hoped that it was actually the end of the world. Flooding was a disappointment.

It's clear that people either do not know how to silence their phones, or they don't care enough about common courtesy to bother to do so. It's infuriating and insulting to the rest of us who want to enjoy the music or movie or whatever we're doing without hearing phone noises. If you don't know how to silence your phone, you should turn it off. If you don't know how to turn off your phone, you shouldn't own one. I have to make an announcement about turning off phones before Saturday evening's New York Repertory Orchestra concert, and I have to restrain myself from turning it into a rant. Maybe if I post the rant here, I'll make a short and sweet announcement on Saturday.

I don't know what the solution is. Cell phone jammers are illegal. You can't force people to turn them off. All you can do is make these announcements and hope that people get better about following them. But this epidemic of ignorant, self-involved cell phone users at concerts makes me want to reconsider going to New York Philharmonic concerts. I can avoid people talking on their phones during movies by going to sparsely attended showings at out-of-the-way theaters. But I can't avoid idiots at Avery Fisher Hall. Not going to concerts might be my only option. And that's a shame.

A review of this weekend's NY Opera Exchange production of The Magic Flute

It was a lifelong dream of mine to play in the orchestra for Mozart's The Magic Flute, and after this weekend I can check that accomplishment off my list. I had a wonderful time playing one of my favorite operas with a talented cast of singers and musicians.

Here's a review of the production from Voce di meche, an opera blog about chamber opera companies  in New York. I only got to see a few hints of the full production from my seat in the pit, but I think they've captured the spirit of the show. It was such an honor to be involved in the production and I look forward to many more!

Jazz night at the New York Philharmonic

Three years ago, the New York Philharmonic premiered Wynton Marsalis's Swing Symphony on opening night and I wrote about it in my review of that concert. My memory must be going in my old age, because I remembered little about watching that concert on TV other than thinking the piece was good but nothing remarkable. When I saw tonight's concert on my schedule, featuring a variety of jazz and jazz-like pieces by Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Copland along with Marsalis's work, I thought that it would be great to see Mark Nuccio (acting principal clarinet) play the Copland Clarinet Concerto and that the Marsalis piece would be interesting to hear live. But that was it. I wasn't prepared for just how much I'd enjoy actually hearing the work in person.

The concert opened with Igor Stravinsky's Ragtime for 11 instruments, which sounded like a Scott Joplin piece as translated by a Russian living in Paris writing avant-garde music at the end of the First World War. I liked the odd twangy sound of the cimbalom, not a typical orchestral instrument but one that fit right in with Stravinsky's unique sound. Next came Dmitri Shostakovich's Tahiti Trot, a piece that we would better know as "Tea For Two." There were some giggles from the audience as the familiar melody passed from one group of instruments to the other, from harp and celeste to winds to brass to strings and finally to the whole orchestra in unison. Assistant Conductor Case Scaglione was right at home running the orchestra through these two vastly different yet similarly jazzy works.

Mark Nuccio took the stage for Aaron Copland's Concerto for Clarinet and Strings, composed in 1950 for Benny Goodman. His playing was sublime, tender and fluid in the first movement and fast and furious in the frenetic second movement. Alan Gilbert did a fine job of managing the orchestra in the first movement though I wished the strings could have been softer in the second movement so that the rapid-fire notes of the clarinet would have come through more clearly.

Wynton Marsalis's Swing Symphony was the featured work on the second half of the program. It took a few extra minutes to get the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra all set up. They occupied the middle of the stage, with saxophones, trombones and trumpets, plus upright bass, piano and drums, with the rest of the orchestra surrounding them. There was a larger than usual battery of percussion at the back of the stage, and throughout the piece the Philharmonic percussion section made full use of it. Marsalis balanced the jazz orchestra's involvement with the rest of the orchestra. There were sections that only involved the jazz musicians taking solos, and in other places they sat while the Philharmonic played. But most of the work had both groups playing together, bouncing melodies off each other and sharing lines. Oboes picked up a fugal subject that the solo clarinetist in the band introduced. Concertmaster Glen Dicterow took a solo turn, as did principal cellist Carter Brey. And each member of the jazz orchestra got a chance to show their talents, including Mr. Marsalis, which had me sitting in my seat thinking "that's Wynton freaking Marsalis playing in the same room as me!!" Yes, I was more than a little excited by this piece. My favorite parts were the Philharmonic percussionists in their white ties and tails, playing bongos, Cuban rhythms on drums, or just clapping rhythmically in places. You don't know what you're missing until you've seen the Philharmonic timpanist put down his mallets and clap along with the other members of the percussion section. I think the Swing Symphony works much better as a live concert piece than as a recording or on video, but I would love to hear the piece again, even recorded, just to hear what I might have missed.

The seven movements of the work (expanded from the five performed on opening night in 2010 to include more recent jazz elements) took the listener through the entire history of jazz, from ragtime and New Orleans to the big band sound of the '40s to bebop and Coltrane and modern jazz. And the conceit worked extremely well. I could imagine that I was in a New Orleans bar, then a jazz club in the Village, then (of all things) a big band concert back home in Johnstown, PA. The audience applauded at the end of each movement, and it didn't seem at all unusual for a concert like that. The spirit of jazz seemed to have taken hold of everyone in the room. I listened to most of the piece with a huge smile on my face, enjoying every minute. Mr. Gilbert appeared to be enjoying himself as well, smiling when he made a cue or started another section with a new jaunty tempo. The members of the jazz orchestra, dressed in suits and long ties as opposed to the Philharmonic in their tuxedoes, had their own ways of communicating with each other. They whispered to each other during the piece and Mr. Marsalis occasionally leaned over to groove along with his drummer. At the end of the piece both Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Marsalis received long, loud ovations from the audience, as did the jazz orchestra. The jazz group favored us with an encore, which started with a solo from Mr. Marsalis followed by each member of the group. When the bass player finished his solo he gestured toward the Philharmonic's bass section. We couldn't tell what was going on at first, but then one of the Philharmonic's bassists did his own pizzicato solo. This led to a few minutes of dueling bass solos between the jazz orchestra's bassist and the Philharmonic's bassist. I haven't seen anything like that since the last time I was in New Orleans, and that's not even close to the same thing.

It was quite possibly the most fun I've had at the New York Philharmonic in years, and I always enjoy the concertgoing experience there. I haven't seen an audience reaction to a piece like that in a long time. It's so exciting to see that. We're going back at the end of the month for two Stravinsky ballets (with the help of the geniuses at Giants Are Small) and we can't wait to see what the Philharmonic has in store then.

A few quick thoughts about Thursday night at the Philharmonic

It's not a proper New York Philharmonic season for me if I don't see Anne-Sophie Mutter perform.  Her reading of Beethoven's Romance in F was lyrical and sweet.  Sebastian Currier's Time Machines, a concerto he composed for Ms. Mutter, was an unusual seven-movement work with touches of Barber, Glass, and Reich in places.  I especially enjoyed the fifth movement, titled "entropic time," in which the themes and cohesion of the music gradually disintegrated into snippets of phrases and random echoes from different instruments of the orchestra.

Bruckner's Symphony No. 2 was well-played throughout but it was the third movement that drew me into the work.  Alan Gilbert led a ferocious reading of the Scherzo that had me on the edge of my seat.  The fury of the strings combined with blasts from the brass and loud bursts from the timpani energized the orchestra and carried over to the finale.  It had been 40 years since the Philharmonic last performed this symphony.  In the program notes Gilbert states that Bruckner is a composer whose music he could conduct every day for the rest of his life.  I hope that means more Bruckner on Philharmonic programs in the future.

Emanuel Ax and Mahler at the NY Philharmonic

Saturday evening's concert opened with a solo performance of Debussy's Pagodes, a “slide show” for piano (as Ax and music director Alan Gilbert explained before the concert).  Gilbert said that they decided earlier in the week to perform the Debussy work back-to-back with Olivier Messiaen's Couleurs de la cité céleste, as the two pieces were similar in style and theme.  The Debussy was a short but pleasant work, and Ax's work was delightful and charming.  Gilbert, who had been standing at the podium through Ax's performance, then cued the small ensemble (horns, trumpets, trombones, winds, and percussion) for the Messiaen piece.  I'm not a fan of Messiaen's music.   The only thing I could think during the performance (which was excellent, by the way) was that his music sounds like what happens when you try to make sense of a two-year-old banging on a piano.  His music doesn't sound like music to me.  It's barely controlled random notes.  And I say this having performed Messiaen with NYRO a few years ago.   I didn't understand it then either.


After intermission, I returned to the hall to a stage filled with chairs and percussion for Mahler's Symphony No. 5.  I heard Gustavo Dudamel lead the Philharmonic in this work a little over two years ago, and I think Saturday night's performance with Alan Gilbert was ever so slightly better.  Gilbert was in full control at the podium, using every inch of space he had to hold the massive ensemble together.   Each movement had moments that gave me chills and I hung on nearly every note.  Phil Smith on trumpet and Phil Myers on horn were both magnificent, and each received well-deserved cheers at the end of the piece.   I've been to every New York Philharmonic Mahler concert this year, and I think this one was my favorite.  I'm going to be thinking about this performance for a long time, or at least until they open next season with Mahler's Symphony No. 2, my all-time favorite.

The Philadelphia Orchestra's bankruptcy filing and the state of classical music today

I was as dismayed as everyone else in the classical music community when I read that the Philadelphia Orchestra had declared bankruptcy.  It's a tough time for American orchestras.  The Detroit Symphony Orchestra's musicians' months-long strike ended just a few weeks ago.  The New Mexico Symphony Orchestra folded, as have a few others recently.  But Philadelphia is one of the most renowned American orchestras, on a level with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  It's difficult to see an orchestra with that kind of history in financial straits.  However, bankruptcy is not the end of a business.  It's a chance to reorganize, get clear of debt and continue operating.  It's a bad thing for an organization's credit, but it's better than shutting down completely.  The Philadelphia Orchestra isn't going anywhere. 

But as this commenter on the New York Times pointed out, modern orchestras are not lean, mean musical machines.  They're bloated, with far more musicians on the regular payroll than are required by most classical works.  They have a limited repertoire.  They play the same concert three to five times a week.  And let's not even get into the aging audience for this music. 

On the other hand, I like this quote from Arts Beat's Daniel Wakin:

Some have argued too that there is nothing wrong with orchestras serving — in part — the function of museums, keeping the classics on view.

That's an argument for the status quo.  Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart aren't writing any new music, and there's a good reason orchestras keep programming Beethoven's Fifth Symphony: people will pay to hear it.  No one complains when Bruce Springsteen sings "Born To Run" in concert for the 10,000th time. And regardless of whether you listen to classical music, it's a link to our shared musical past.  It's important to keep this art form around, just as we wouldn't throw out a Picasso painting or a Giacometti sculpture.

I do hope the Philadelphia Orchestra finds a way through its current financial problems and comes out the other side stronger than ever.  But I think it will take some serious re-evaluation of the presentation and performance of classical music to get there.  Other orchestras should keep a close watch on developments in Philadelphia before their organizations reach the same state.

Masur conducts Liszt, Gubaidulina and Brahms with the New York Philharmonic

Last night's concert by the New York Philharmonic was something of a "greatest hits" show bookending a brand-new song.  And we had the rare experience of seeing two different conductors on the same program.  Kurt Masur, the scheduled conductor for the program, had an temporary eye infection that "[impeded] his ability to see the score" (according to a program insert from the Philharmonic), so he conducted the opening and closing works on the program, and stepped aside in favor of New York Philharmonic Assistant Conductor Daniel Boico for Sofia Gubaidulina's Two Paths: Concerto for Two Violas and Orchestra.

The Philharmonic opened the concert with Franz Liszt's symphonic poem Les Preludes, one of my favorites.  Masur took the podium and received loud cheers before the orchestra made a sound.  He conducted this work (and the Brahms symphony after intermission) from memory and without a baton.  Throughout the concert, his conducting consisted more of cues and occasional indications of tempo changes than what I think of as actual conducting.  But Masur is in his 80s and while he moved well, he looked his age.  He is also Music Director Emeritus of the Philharmonic, and as his audience reception showed, he is still beloved by audiences and familiar with the orchestra and its musicians.  I got the feeling that Masur could have communicated whatever he needed to the musicians with his eyebrows and the concert would have been fantastic.  And opening with Les Preludes is sort of like Bruce Springsteen opening a show with "Born To Run."  It's a great piece of music, an audience favorite, a showcase for the entire orchestra, and music everyone in the group knows well.  And it was exciting to hear.  The brass fanfares were impressive, but what I enjoyed even more was the balance among all the instrument groups.  I heard melodies in the piece that I hadn't heard before.  I think I say that often, but it was certainly true last night. 

Daniel Boico took the podium for the Gubaidulina concerto.  His conducting was almost the polar opposite of Masur's: clear and precise beats for every measure, left hand cues when necessary, and he kept a close eye on the score.  To be fair, these concerts are only the second time the Philharmonic has performed this piece, so everyone in the room was paying extra attention, including Boico.  He had the task of being pressed into service as conductor for this piece at the last minute, and to a neophyte conductor like myself, that seems like a massive challenge.  But what an opportunity!  Boico performed admirably, managing the music and the soloists.  Principal Violist Cynthia Phelps and Associate Principal Rebecca Young were equally impressive as the soloists (they also premiered this work with the Philharmonic in 1999, under Masur).  Phelps took the higher part while Young explored the lower registers of the viola.  The music became a conversation between the soloists and the rest of the orchestra, including solo turns from Carter Brey on cello, Michelle Kim on violin, and from the winds.  It was a melancholic and mysterious piece, and well suited to the dusky tones of the violas.  I really enjoyed it, and not just as a violist.  I'll have to listen to the radio broadcast of this concert to hear it again.

After intermission, Masur returned to the podium for Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 1, another personal and audience favorite.  Phelps and Young also returned to the stage, as the first stand in the viola section.  I thought that was interesting; I'd expected them to have the rest of the night off since they had already performed as soloists.  Masur took the tempi in the Brahms just a touch slower than other versions I've heard.  Maybe the two were unrelated, but I thought that the slightly slower tempi enhanced the tension in the first movement and brought out some of the melodies and harmonies that might otherwise remain hidden.  At the end of the work, the rousing finale brought most of the audience to its feet and Masur received another loud and extended ovation.  The audiences in New York really love his work.  I hope he keeps coming back here to conduct as long as he's able to do so.

Hey, I'm playing a concert this weekend!

Saturday night, the usual time and place.  We're playing Vaughan Williams, Martinu, and Humperdinck, though not in that order.

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/REMINDER--New-York-Repertory-Orchestra-Spring-Concert---Saturday--March-26--2011.html?soid=1102230218778&aid=JBK6Crn62_o

The NSO takes on Messiaen's "Turangalila"

My brother and his girlfriend are going to hear Olivier Messiaen's gargantuan "Turangalila-Symphonie" performed by the National Symphony Orchestra this weekend in Washington, DC.  I'm not a big fan of Messiaen's music but I'd go see this work in concert in a heartbeat.  It calls for a massive orchestra with obsolete instruments and makes demands on the players and audiences that few pieces do.  In short, it's a spectacle.  And I love spectacles, musical or otherwise.  It's disappointing that there were "hundreds of empty seats" at the Kennedy Center last night.  I think that New York audiences would turn out for this piece.  (A quick check of the New York Philharmonic's history shows that they've performed it twice, in 1988 and 2000, so it must have been popular enough for a second hearing.)  I look forward to hearing my brother's review of the performance.

RIP Sidney Harth

My mother passed along the obituary for Sidney Harth, who passed away a few days ago.  I never got to hear him play the violin, but I saw him conduct the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1987 at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and then I had the privilege of working with him a few years later at the 1991 MENC All-Eastern Orchestra Festival in Pittsburgh.  OK, "worked with" is being generous, since I was in the far back of the viola section.  He was a firm and knowledgeable conductor for that weekend.  We only played one piece, Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini, and he made sure we were fully prepared to play every note.  We were so well-prepared that one afternoon of the three-day festival he decided we would sight-read instead of rehearse.  So he split the orchestra in half (by having us take turns) and half of us read Schumann's Symphony No. 3 while the other half read a Brahms symphony.  I got to play the Schumann, which was a real treat for me as it quickly became one of my favorite symphonies.  I still have the recording of our rendition of the Tchaikovsky.  I only wish we'd been able to play at Heinz Hall instead of a massive concrete hall in the Lawrence Convention Center; the sound would have been so much better in a proper space.

It's hard for me to believe that was twenty years ago.  I remember it like it was last week.

Scheherazade

On Thursday night, NYRO begins rehearsals for our December concert.  The program will be Samuel Barber's Music For A Scene from Shelley, Schumann's Cello Concerto with Eric Jacobsen as soloist, and my all-time, top of the list favorite piece of classical music, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.

I fell in love with Scheherazade early in high school.  I'd heard excerpts from it on the radio but it wasn't until I bought a cassette recording of the piece that I was able to listen to the entire work from beginning to end.  I adored the structure of the work, the way Rimsky-Korsakov used music to tell stories from the Arabian Nights.  And the orchestration is amazing.  Scheherazade was the first orchestral score that I bought, and I spent hours looking through it and conducting from it in front of the stereo in my bedroom.

I've been waiting for twenty years to play this piece.  I missed it by one season when I played with the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra.  I graduated from high school in 1992 and went to college at Georgetown, and the JSO performed it in the spring of 1993.  I came home for the concert, and while I enjoyed hearing my colleagues play, I dearly wanted to be on the stage with them.  A few years later, I was out of college and living in Washington, DC when I heard that the Georgetown University Orchestra planned to play Scheherazade.  I contacted the music director and she welcomed me back to the group.  But after a couple of rehearsals we'd only played part of the fourth movement and it was clear we weren't going to pull off the entire work.  So I pulled out.  Thus ended my brief orchestral comeback of 1999.

To say that I'm excited about playing Scheherazade would be a bit of an understatement.  I'm positively giddy.  But I've looked at the music and realized why I never looked at the viola part before.  It's almost all filler.  Rimsky-Korsakov was a master of orchestration, and the viola part fills in the harmony and only occasionally plays something resembling the melody.  It's not going to be a "fun" part to play.  But I'm still looking forward to taking the piece apart and putting it back together again in rehearsals.  I just hope I don't get sick of it by December 18.

No love for Carl Nielsen?

This weekend, the New York Repertory Orchestra is performing Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 4, "The Inextinguishable."  Before we started rehearsing the symphony, I didn't know much more about the piece than its two sets of timpani that "duel" in the last movement.  The entire work has grown on me over the past six weeks and I can't wait to play it on Saturday night.  As of yesterday, my mother was still thinking about coming to New York for the concert, in part because Nielsen 4 is one of her favorite pieces and she's never heard it live before. I found that hard to believe, given the popularity and accessibility of the symphony.  In addition to the fireworks of the outer movements, the second movement is a quiet showcase for the winds and the third movement features a sweeping melody that gives the symphony its "inextinguishable" character.  I assumed that she'd heard it in concert at some point during her many years as a Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra season-ticket holder.

The PSO doesn't have a database of its performance history, but my other favorite orchestra, The New York Philharmonic, does.  I looked up Carl Nielsen and I was surprised to see that of his six symphonies, only four of them have ever been performed by the orchestra.  Symphonies No. 4 and 5 have been played the most, with four and five subscription performances (sets of concerts), respectively.  Neither one has been on a Philharmonic program since 2003.  Nielsen's Symphony No. 2, "The Four Temperaments," which NYRO played in May 2007, has had only one NY Philharmonic subscription performance, in 1973.  Symphony No. 3 had one subscription performance in 1965.  By way of comparison, Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 3, not one of his most famous works (but one that NYRO has also performed recently), has had eight performances, the last in 2006.

Looking elsewhere in Nielsen's body of work, his Violin Concerto has has two performances, though none since 1989.  That may have more to do with the work's place in the virtuoso repertoire than the Philharmonic's program choices.  And Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto had two performances by the orchestra's now-retired longtime principal, Stanley Drucker, the last in 1982.

The point is that if Carl Nielsen's music is this unpopular with the New York Philharmonic, one of the busiest orchestras in the world, one could assume that his music is equally unpopular with other major orchestras.  I do realize that I'm extrapolating from a small sample size, but I can only work with the data I have.  Maybe someone well-placed at the Philharmonic will hear our concert this weekend and more of Nielsen's music will find its way onto upcoming programs.

Taking my music on the road

I was in Baltimore and Bowie last weekend visiting my family, of whom I see far too little.  My brother had an extra ticket for Friday night's concert by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra so I left work early to meet him.  The BSO performs at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, a modern orchestra hall with curved surfaces for exceptional acoustics.  The concert consisted of Gustav Mahler's arrangements of Bach's orchestral suites and Mahler's Symphony No. 7.  The orchestra was amazing in their own right, but the sound inside the hall was amazing.  During the Bach piece, the harpsichord was crystal-clear from our seats in the balcony.  Mahler's 7th was just as impressive.  The fourth movement features a mandolin and guitar, and these players sat at the furthest point from us, behind the first violins.  But their notes came out as clearly as if they were sitting next to me.  And of course the other instrument groups like the horns and woodwinds sounded incredible.  While I prefer the NY Philharmonic, I'm a little envious of the concert hall in Baltimore.

Before the concert I looked at the photos of the musicians in the lobby.  I recognized the name of the assistant principal cellist but didn't place it until I saw it in the program.  He used to moonlight with the Georgetown University Orchestra when I was there.  Our music director studied at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and she would bring several students with her as "ringers" to fill out the string sections for our concerts.  Dariusz Skoraczewski was one of the two "Dariuses" that she would bring in, the other being a violinist.  The girls in the orchestra used to swoon over these two, but they didn't seem to notice or care.  It's also possible that they didn't speak much English and therefore didn't understand what was going on.  I hadn't thought about either of them since college but as soon as I saw the name Skoraczewski   I remembered the swooning.  It's good to see he's had such a successful career since those days.

I brought my viola with me on the trip so my brother (a violinist) could give me a few pointers about my playing.  I haven't had a lesson in many years and I know my technique has suffered.  He showed me a few things I was doing wrong with my bow and readjusted my viola's bridge, both of which resulted in some odd sounds coming from my instrument.  We were going to play duets on Saturday evening but the hair on his bow broke before he could play a note, so we had to share my bow (he had a spare but we were at my father's house and his spare bow was in Baltimore).  We did get to sight-read one of Mozart's violin and viola duets on Sunday afternoon, to great applause from my stepmother.  I gave him the music so he could look it over for a future sight-reading session.  It was much easier than I thought to haul my viola on the train, so I will do it again in the future.

I was in Pittsburgh over Labor Day weekend on a semi-secret mission.  We ate ribs, toured the Warhol Museum, avoided a Bret Michaels concert, had some delicious Indian food in Oakland, and walked all over the city.  I flew JetBlue again and this time there were no incidents whatsoever.  Both flights were as unremarkable as possible, which is just what I want out of a trip.

I'm still thinking about the NYRO preview and other ways I can promote the orchestra's upcoming season.  Rehearsals begin Thursday night and I can't wait to get back to playing every week.

Coming soon to this space

I hope that posting about something I plan to write is just as valid as actually writing it.  With another NYRO season upon us, I'm going to write a preview of some of the music we're playing this year.  If I feel particularly energized, it will happen in the next 48 hours; if not, look for it here early next week.