The S.C. Philharmonic's Season of Change

Nakahara the Magnificent!

First came the “Magnificent Seven,” candidates for leadership of the South Carolina Philharmonic. Now there is one: Morihiko Nakahara.

Why all the fuss about conductors, anyway?

“The basic technique of conducting can be learned in a few lessons,” writes Nicholas Slonimsky reassuringly, in his slightly irreverent “Lectionary of Music.” He later adds that a conductor’s “prime duty is to translate the written notes in an orchestral score into an effective panorama of sound, faithfully rendering the composer’s creative designs.”

Hmmmmm. Seems like the job just got more difficult.

“The art of conducting is unique in that it requires the musical, psychological, and intellectual ability to coordinate the instruments and voices in such a way as to create a perfect euphony of the ensemble incorporating a great variety of dynamic nuances and timbres, and to maintain a balance of contrapuntal components within the general harmonic framework and the animating flow of propulsive rhythm.”

Let’s see, “perfect euphony,” dynamic nuances,” “contrapuntal components;” think we’ll need a few more lessons.

But Morihiko Nakahara is there. In my review of the concert he led with the S.C. Philharmonic last October, I observed that he created “Quietly sensuous sonic atmospheres contrasted with orchestral intensity seldom heard at the Koger Center.” I also noted that he “is an exhilarating leader with convincing musical ideas. His physical gestures handsomely reflect the character of the music, and when required, generate enormous energy and intensity.”

Did the other candidates fail to do this? Honestly, several of them succeeded magnificently too, and we could argue over the degree of each success. But at the April 21st news conference, everyone was unanimous that, as only the second candidate to come to town, Nakahara had set the standard the others had to match. Did other candidates generate “enormous energy and intensity?” Yes, two or three others did, in my opinion. Were they “exhilarating leaders with convincing musical ideas?’ Sure. So why Mr. Nakahara?

Because there’s more to the job these days, and in fact there always has been. But let’s go back to the rationale verbalized by SC Phil staff. Executive Director Rhonda Hunsinger called him the “unanimous first choice.” Gail Morrison, chair of the search committee, said that Nakahara “set the bar” by which others were judged.

By the way, Hunsinger and Morrison are to be complimented for setting their own bar for the selection process high, and making this a true competition. Along with the many complexities of making the concert season run smoothly for the orchestra, they had to deal with arrangements and temperaments of seven high-strung guest conductors. No small task, probably.

Speaking of tasks, the modern music director surely must be about “coordinating the instruments” and “perfect euphony,” but there are additional matters of budget, personnel, meeting the needs of the musicians, community presence, building bridges between performers, audience and supporters, and especially programming. Is this something new? Absolutely not. Handel (composer and impresario as well as conductor) did it all, and changed direction several times, moving to London, focusing on Italian opera, then English oratorio, and instrumental music. He had to eat, and if the public wasn’t buying tickets to what he was presenting on stage, he changed.

Mozart is another great example, spending much of his life unsuccessfully trying to get a court appointment, going on long performance tours with his father, finally breaking out on his own in Vienna, papa always cajoling and complaining. But remember that Handel and Mozart kept the standards very, very high as they adapted to the vagaries of the public. Nakahara must do that as well, even if he only has the conductor part to worry about. Nice that he doesn’t have to compose the music in addition to wielding the baton, or sell the tickets and set up chairs and stands.

How will he do as a lightening rod for the Philharmonic, filling the seats, rallying the sponsors? Board president Robert Stepp called him the “perfect person to take us forward musically.” Clearly, all parties concerned think he has the energy, persona and leadership skills necessary to build orchestra quality, attract audiences and be a magnet to current and potential new supporters.

I don’t know much about those things, but in matters of programming and audience, if we’ve learned anything from Nicholas Smith’s last season and the one just ended, it is that many in the audience have moved on from the warhorse programming of the past. Smith’s gutsy performance of Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra must have broadsided some in the audience (and some in the orchestra), but give him high marks for the courage of his musical convictions.

Nakahara’s “Last Round” by Golijov was a bold choice, though fairly safe because it was so novel and had a good story, but give him high marks also for an attractive and challenging choice for his audition.

In the end, programming may boil down to give-and-take between Maestro, management and money. I’m no insider with the SC Phil, but my guess is that previous boards rode herd on programming choices heavily. (If I’m wrong, my apologies.) But the point is that much of the programming of the last ten years merely looked good on paper. Perhaps it looked good only because it looked familiar.

I say trust our new Maestro. He has no interest in messing things up. Allow his artistic instincts and creativity to prevail. Take advantage of his intelligence and personal warmth. Seek creative outlets in which to show him to the community and vice versa. But don’t expect very much from the broadcast media. They have other agendas and will only be interested in him as a novelty, although that may be of some help. Morihiko Nakahara is a man of substance and the media is especially bored with anything of substance, or a message that lasts more than 60 seconds.

Let the community meet him in person. He has a winning personality, and my experience is that people are genuinely intrigued when they meet a real, live individual of artistic substance.

Yes, America is awash in trivial music, but the South Carolina Philharmonic is not about trivia. The Philharmonic can proudly promote Mr. Nakahara as a genuine artist of merit as well as a nice guy (which he is). Allow him reasonable license to bring great music to Columbia.

Isn’t that the reason everyone went to so much trouble?

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Every person who has contributed to this blog has commented on how much better the orchestra sounded this season. Though I zinged the group a time or two this season, I join with the others in applauding its musical and sonic improvements. Will we ever have a group as good as the National Symphony that played the Koger this season? Probably not anytime soon. The NSO was actually not all that good until fairly recently, but they certainly are now. My university students were absolutely stunned by the accuracy, the amazing volume and intensity of sound, and the musical energy.

Speaking of students, the educational role of well-established orchestras is vigorous and profound. The educational role of struggling ones is often puny and the first to go in an emergency. Columbia has some unique opportunities, with the USC School of Music next door, the USC String Project across the street, and zillions of public school band and orchestra members only minutes away. Educators who are responsible for music education in the various districts might want to get in touch with the Philharmonic office, with their own ideas. Nakahara is said to be interested in educational outreach. I hope the music education community tests him.

It will be interesting to get a sense of the sound Nakahara will try to get from his forces, how he will manipulate their efforts to a common goal. Will he go for a bold, resonant sound, or a more tightly focused sound emphasizing clarity? Or will we hear some of both, or another approach that hasn’t come to mind? And how will economic realities affect his plans? The big, bold Philadelphia sound isn’t possible with eleven first violins and even fewer seconds. With the price of fuel (and now food) soaring, will the audience be further squeezed down?

No one knows of course, but I like my wife’s clear view of the unknown: plan for success. Nothing else makes sense. Except be ready for anything.

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In addition to thanking Hunsinger and Morrison for making the conductor search a vital and important event for this community, allow me to thank a few others who contributed to its success:

MARK LAYMAN at “The State” made this blog happen. While visits and postings were fewer than we hoped, perhaps the missing links in the online edition were partially to blame. And perhaps numbers don’t tell the whole story. I wish more musicians would have jumped in with their perspective, but I know how busy they are and maybe they were not comfortable voicing opinions as the search was underway. Mark also gets my thanks for keeping the SC Phil reviews going during difficult fiscal times when every dollar spent comes under close scrutiny. I have asked Mark to keep the blog running through next season, but don’t know how that will turn out. If anyone cares to weigh in about this, please do so.

JEFFREY DEY also at “The State” contributed quality reporting in print and on this blog. The word just doesn’t get out in these matters unless somebody gets it out, and Jeffrey did all that and more.

THE SC PHILHARMONIC STAFF allowed me to visit and report on each conductor’s first rehearsal, and that gave me a sense of what each candidate was trying to do in their allotted time. The staff also provided invaluable press information on each, and details about their musical choices.

THE MUSICIANS OF THE ORCHESTRA who worked extra hard at rehearsals, practiced more before each, and delivered more excitement and bravura at the concerts. Yes, there was a difference this year. It was all to the good and as apparent to the eye as to the ear. The audiences picked up on it, were more enthusiastic, and my, think how important that is! Special mention must go to Concertmaster MARY LEE TAYLOR; her hard work consistently energized the string section and often the whole ensemble. At the end of Golijov’s aforementioned musical fistfight, “Last Round,” it was Taylor’s bow hand that deserved to be raised in victory.

Gregory Barnes

Afterthoughts on the Seventh Concert: 100 metronomes, 2 clarinets, but no oboes

The shortest work on the program calls for the longest elaboration here. Why the interest? For one, Ligeti was our contemporary. He passed away in 2006, and some of us were alive when the Concert Romanesc was composed in 1951. And then there’s his personal story, born in Transylvania, sent to a Nazi work camp, his family to Auschwitz; later, under Communist rule, unable to speak from his own heart and having this particular work totally banned. There’s more, but let’s hear it from others who have studied Ligeti intimately. The following is from the 2006 St. Louis Symphony program notes by Paul Schaivo:

“Ligeti, one of the most original and important musical thinkers of our time, first came to prominence during the 1960s. In his works of that decade, the usual details of melody, harmony, and rhythm collapsed into tightly woven webs of sound: dense chords yielding cloudlike sonorities, melodic lines piled up to form tangled knots of counterpoint, or long strands of taut sonority. The result was a strange new musical world, at once visceral and dreamlike, which became familiar to a wide audience when several of Ligeti’s compositions were used in the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Since the 1970s, the composer’s music has continued to evolve in a fascinating and unpredictable manner.

“ Concert Românesc, however, is an early work, written in 1951, while Ligeti was still living in Communist Hungary. (He fled his homeland for the West during the uprising of 1956.) Throughout the Stalinist Soviet bloc, concert music in a folkloric vein was encouraged by government officials. Ligeti ostensibly heeded that pressure in writing Concert Românesc. He was, in fact, genuinely interested in Romanian folk music, which he had often heard during his youth and had studied at the Folklore Institute of Bucharest, in 1949. Some of the melodies he had learned during his research made their way into his “Romanian Concerto.” But, as the composer observed of this piece, “not everything in it is genuinely Romanian, as I also invented elements in the spirit of the village bands.” The original touches, especially some modernist harmonies in the final movement, led to the work being banned after a single rehearsal in Budapest. It did not receive a public performance until 1971.

“The four short movements of Concert Românesc follow one another without pause. Of particular interest to us is the evocation, at the start of the third movement, of the Rumanian mountain horn. Here, the composer writes an echoing duet for two horns, calling to each other from a distance, and instructs the players to use “natural” tuning, which produces a peculiar melodic inflection. The horn calls return, poetically, at the conclusion of the piece.”

Ligeti has written that under Stalin's dictatorship, folk music was only allowed on the condition that it conform to a "politically correct" format. "It was forced into the straitjacket of the norms of socialist realism." In December of 1956, two months after the Hungarian revolution was put down by the Soviet Army, he fled to Vienna and eventually became an Austrian citizen.

As one would expect, Ligeti's compositions from this dark time are not examples of a sunny musical temperament. Of this ominous period he writes: "People living in the West cannot begin to imagine what it was like in the Soviet empire, where art and culture were strictly regulated as a matter of course -- they had to conform to abstract concepts that were almost identical to the regulations of the National Socialists. Art had to be 'healthy' and 'edifying' and had to come 'from the people.' In short, it had to reflect Party directives."

“Atmospheres,” for orchestra, serves as an extreme pole of Ligeti's work, conveying visions of a sustained ethereal motion in a texture he calls “micropolyphony.” In contrast, Concert Romanesc is a dynamic and vital work, at times reminiscent of a Gypsy lament and dance. The horns remind us of Alphorns, played without use of any valves, so therefore slightly out of tune. At the other end of the scale is the following piece, described by Alex Ross of “The New Yorker”:

“György Ligeti, the greatest of Transylvanian composers, once wrote a ‘Poème Symphonique’ for one hundred 
metronomes. The year was 1962, and the piece had the 
look of a prank—a rotten egg tossed at the classical 
tradition. In performance, however, it cast a curious spell, 
one that the composer may not have fully anticipated. 
Several years ago, I was lucky to witness a scaled-down, 
twenty-four-metronome version of ‘Poème,’ at the New 
England Conservatory. The hilarity of the scene—a 
concert stage filled with windup machines—gave way to 
a sense of unexpected complexity, as networks of rhythm 
emerged from clouds of ticktock noise. Then, as the 
metronomes expired, one by one, there was a strange 
tremor of emotion; the last survivors, waving their little 
arms in the air, looked lonely, forlorn, almost human. I 
thought of Robert Musil’s story ‘Flypaper,’ in which a 
trapped insect is said to perform ‘endless gesticulations 
of despair.’
“The ‘Poème Symphonique’ is Ligeti in a nutshell. He is,
first of all, one of the few major composers, modern or 
ancient, who are notable for a sense of humor.”

You can look and listen to the “Poeme” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8v-uDhcDyg (Wait past the French introduction and the hundred metronomes gradually appear. Really.)

Ross continues:
“If Ligeti were nothing more than a joker, he would never 
have reached his perch at the summit of contemporary 
music. When the Swedish pianist Fredrik Ullén played 
the composer’s Études at Cooper Union earlier this 
month, the hall practically shook with the force of a 
personality. Blessed with awesome powers of invention 
and assimilation, Ligeti may be the one living composer 
for whom "genius" is not too strong a word… Where the
Romantics used to smile through tears, Ligeti cries through smiles.”

Somewhere in between is “Desordre,” a piece for piano about which the composer has written:

"I am using only an idea from African notions of movement, not the music itself. In Africa, cycles or periods of constantly equal length are supported by a regular beat (which is usually danced, not played). The individual beat can be divided into two, three sometimes even four or five 'elementary units' or fast pulses. I employ neither the cyclic form nor the beats, but use rather the elementary pulse as an underlying gridwork. I use this principle in Désordre for accent shifting, which allows illusory pattern deformations to emerge; the pianist plays a steady rhythm, but the irregular distribution of accents leads to seemingly chaotic configurations. Another fundamental characteristic of African music was significant to me: the simmultaneity of symmetry and asymmetry. The cycles are always structured asymmetrically (e.g., twelve pulses in 7+5), although the beat, as conceived by the musician, proceeds in even pulses."

Got that?

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Tchaikovsky certainly had his problems, but they were of a personal nature and were not imposed on him by the authorities, as in Ligeti’s case. Perhaps it's fair to say that society had a hand in imposing his problems on him. Whatever your view, who of us can say that Tchaikovsky's suffering was less severe? Which is worse, to be under the rule of brutal authority or finding no way out of our own personal hell? The good news is that both persevered and we got the music.

Two Tchaikovsky quotes:

“I sit down to the piano regularly at nine o’clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.”

“Music is not illusion, but revelation.”

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Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 (K. 488) is more of a special work than some may realize. One of three piano concertos written while also composing “The Marriage of Figaro,” it broke new ground by using clarinets instead of oboes. Also missing are the brightness and volume of trumpets and timpani. The wind coloring is fascinating, a softer, more mysterious fabric. Here’s how Phillip Huscher describes it in Chicago Symphony program notes:

“Mozart entered the A major piano concerto (K. 488) in his catalog on March 2, 1786, only a month after the one-act comic opera, “The Impresario;” just three weeks before the famous C minor concerto (K. 491); and less than two months before “The Marriage of Figaro.” Although it's not documented, Mozart probably performed the A major concerto at one of the Vienna Lenten concerts a few days after finishing it.

“This and the other two concertos of the “Figaro” winter are the first in Mozart's output to call for clarinets. (Sketches show that Mozart started writing this A major concerto as early as 1784 with oboes instead.) Mozart begins as if he were following the conventional recipe for a classical concerto (which is totally unlike him), but then, after a few pages, he proceeds to ignore nearly every subsequent instruction. The result is the kind of risky—though not reckless—creation known only to the very greatest chefs and composers. The tone of the entire movement is generous and warmly lyrical, although, as in the duet in the same key between the count and Susanna in act 3 of “Figaro,” there's still room for mischief, doubt, and the thrill of imminent danger.

“Mozart marks the slow movement Adagio instead of the more common Andante—what he has to say can't be rushed. This magnificent and justly famous music stands alone among all Mozart concerto movements, not only because of its tempo or key (it's his only work in F-sharp minor), but also because it unlocks a tragic power that won't surface in music again until Beethoven. The wind writing is particularly expressive, and the piano solo is as simple and haunting as any slow aria. Even in Figaro, with its celebrated mixture of laughter and tears, there's scarcely a moment that plunges so deeply into the heart. The finale, a buoyant and delightful rondo, brings us back to A major, and, after the Adagio's revelations, it sounds like the happiest key on earth.”

Music “that plunges so deeply into the heart,” "a tragic power that won't surface in music again until Beethoven," writes Huscher; that’s exactly how I feel about this music. Here’s how The New Grove Dictionary puts it:

“The emphasis in K. 482 [the one Mozart composed just before the one on this concert] is on bravura writing may be contrasted with the much more gentle nature of K. 488 in A [the one played on the concert]; lacking its predecessor’s trumpet and drums [and I would add oboes], this concerto draws on another, softer range of tone colours, of a piece with its graceful themes… The Adagio [second movement] Mozart’s only F-sharp minor movement, is famous for its poetry and its pathos, derived from its gently falling phrases, Siciliana rhythm, ‘Neapolitan’ harmony and expressive woodwind writing.”

You tube has a video of Horowitz playing the finale (and also helping the woodwinds) at a rehearsal (I think in Milan) at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYSnrATETaQ&feature=related.

Gregory Barnes

"Season of Change" wrapped up

Saturday, April 5, 11 p.m.
    Miriam Burns just wrapped up what we’ve calling “The Season of Change” at the S.C. Philharmonic. The music director of the Tallahassee Symphony and cover conductor for the New York Philharmonic, she was the last of seven candidates trying out this season to be the new music director of the Philharmonic. It’s been an exciting year full of mostly good music played mostly very well.
    This concert, and Burns, fell somewhere in the middle of the seven. Everything was solidly played, especially an early (1951) piece by Gyorgy Ligeti influenced by Romanian folk music and the closing Symphony No. 4 by Tchaikovsky. The Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major wasn’t exactly dazzling. But overall a good concert with a decent range of works. Burns is a solid conductor keeping the orchestra moving and taking care of the details very well, the latter being especially important in Ligeti's  “Concerto Romanesc”
    Before the concert Burns came out to the side of the stage and thanked the audience for coming and considering her for the position. Then she talked about the “Concert Romanesc.” Certainly it was a new work for the orchestra and probably just about everyone in the audience, but she told us much more than we needed to know about it and nothing at all about the other pieces. Talking about the composer and his work in larger terms (he was a more adventuresome composer than this piece shows and he was also quite popular as his music was used in several Stanley Kubrick movies) would have done more good. Too many conductors go on and on about unfamiliar works, which is somewhat patronizing to the audience. In spite of the long explanation, the music didn’t get buried in it.
    But the piece was played very well (and the second half of it more interesting than those who know his later work might imagines) and Tchaikovsky was a powerful and emotional wrap up. It was a good, if not spectacular, end to the season.
     Within the next few weeks, it’s likely a conductor will be named. All the seven appear qualified, but all sorts of factors go into the decision; how they got along with the musicians, staff and board, their potential for fund-raising, how committed they would be and how much money they need.
    For me it has been a great learning experience and great fun to attend these concerts, drag some unsuspecting escort along and make them write after, meet the conductors and talk to audience members.
   The best thing has been hearing the orchestra sound very good. Because in the past it didn’t. I do hope whoever is hired shakes things up. The orchestra has to play the warhorses and should. But I would love to hear older works it hasn’t taken on in the past and more newer pieces. I’d hear concerts somewhere other than the Koger Center from time to time and concerts aimed at a broader audience without dumbing down.I’d like to see the orchestra double its budget, hold more rehearsals and hire more musicians. And I’d like to hear it play from this day forward as well as it has played this season. Bravo.
Jeffrey Day .

Miriam Burns First Rehearsal

The search for a new conductor entered its final musical stage Tuesday night as Miriam Burns took the podium in the Koger Center rehearsal hall. Taking her resume at face value, she must be one busy lady already, as music director of the Tallahassee and Kenosha (WI) Symphonies, and the Orchestra of The Redeemer Church in New York. She is also listed as a “cover” conductor for the New York Philharmonic. At least these last two gigs are in the same city.

Choosing Tchaikowsky’s Fourth Symphony to begin with, she and the orchestra read almost fifteen minutes into the first movement before stopping for a tempo adjustment and continuing to the end. Going back to the beginning, Burns began a series of stylistic comments which would establish her interpretation. That interpretation would be to emphasize the tragedy embedded in the music that reflected Tchaikowsky’s unhappy life at the time.

She began with those little eighth notes, usually on the offbeat (actually the third part of a triplet), identifying which should be short and which long. There must be a million of them, and the majority needed to be lengthened as much as possible. The loud brass opening called for “darker, centered” sound, and if the eighth notes there were short, it would sound “too snappy.” She advised violins that their tone had “too much edge” while “a worried sound” would be more appropriate. (Any questions about the interpretation so far?)

Clarinet and bassoon were “terrific” in their transition passage, but Burns wasn’t done with those eighth notes yet. Strings were “nonchalant” when they needed to be “nervous, worried.” They needed to “use more bow” but begin in the “middle of the bow to put more air into the sound.” Accented notes were too pressed, and Burns advised more expressive “conflicted’ accents that expressed “yearning” and “angst.” Tchaikovsky was one unhappy guy.

The first movement has lots of devilish rhythms to put together, and the orchestra seemed to do quite well with them except one particular spot where strings were “guessing at the rhythm.” Those pesky eighth notes popped up again and were, predictably, “too pointy; Make them long and light.”

Burns led the orchestra through most of the third movement (and asked for a smaller triangle) and then read the fourth before the break.

She returned to the fourth movement after the break, and worked a lot on length of notes, articulation and especially direction of musical lines. This has to do with subtle increases and decreases in volume of melodies, phrases and even short rhythmic motives. She soon had the orchestra shaping all of the above, and it was a pleasure to hear.

At 9:25 the orchestra read the second movement, and afterward Burns sang the phrasing she wanted and tried to get that from the orchestra. Peter Kolkay’s bassoon that ends the movement was “wonderful.”

In the final twenty minutes, she and the orchestra read Gyorgy Ligeti’s Concert Romanesc, an entertaining work that should be a crowd-pleaser. She explained the music’s roots in Hungarian folk music and some interesting elements in the orchestration that the audience is sure to enjoy.

Burns has an especially expressive left hand. It gracefully sweeps the area in front of her in a wide swath, left to right, or when using her wrist, up and down rather like the hand gestures of a fine ballerina. She, like some other candidates, makes improvements in several ways: showing style, volume and length of notes with either or both hands, speaking to sections in less noisy passages, and going into the nitty-gritty details when stopped.

Left for another occasion was Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23. Esther Budiardjo will be the soloist Saturday night.

I found no reviews of her conducting, but can report that she has led orchestras in Europe and Asia, along with her American duties. She has worked with both Kurt Masur and Lorin Mazel of the New York Philharmonic, I assume as cover conductor. These gentlemen happen to be two of the finest conductors and musicians in the world.

There are some quotes from other interviews online, and here is one of them:
“I had the ability to show music through gesture. With good conductors, you should be able to watch them on TV, turn down the sound and still know what piece they're conducting by watching their gestures. . . . Otherwise, you're just a traffic cop.”

Indeed.

Gregory Barnes

Afterthoughts on the Sixth Concert: Of Chairman Mao, cracked records, and such

John Adams’ publisher, G. Schirmer, describes Adams as “one of the best known and most often performed of America's composers. As Andrew Porter wrote in “The New Yorker,” Adams is the creator of a ‘flexible new language capable of producing large-scale works that are both attractive and strongly fashioned. His is a music whose highly polished resonant sound is wonderful.’ Le Monde says that his music ‘...gives the impression of a rediscovered liberty, of an open door which lets in the fresh air in great gusts.’ Others simply call it minimalism, but that’s probably a great oversimplification–if indeed minimalism can be oversimplified!

New England born (1947) and trained, he studied with Leon Kirchner, David Del Tredici and Roger Sessions, all fine composers in their own right. Adams’ music has earned wide popularity in all corners of the planet. Here’s a summary of his operas from the Schirmer webite: “Adams's operas have been among the more controversial and widely seen stage events in recent history. In 2003 Lincoln Center presented a festival entitled ‘John Adams: An American Master’, the most extensive festival ever mounted at Lincoln Center devoted to a living composer. Other festivals of his music have been presented recently in London and in Rotterdam, as well as an upcoming festival in Stockholm.”

It’s “Nixon in China” that we must examine to put “The Chairman Dances” into perspective, although the dances ultimately were cut from the score. Adams says he was not exactly a fan of Richard Nixon when Peter Sellers approached him about the project. (Who was? Oh, that's right, Dick Cheney.) What follows is from Adams’ website (www.earbox.com): “But when the poet Alice Goodman agreed to write a verse libretto in couplets, the project suddenly took on an wonderfully complex guise, part epic, part satire, part a parody of political posturing, and part serious examination of historical, philosophical, and even gender issues. All of this centered on six extraordinary personalities: the Nixons, Chairman Mao and Chiang Ch’ing (a.k.a. Madame Mao), Chou En-lai, and Henry Kissinger. Was this not something, both in the sense of story and characterization that only grand opera could treat?

“Nixon in China took two full years to complete. Throughout the composing I felt like I was pregnant with the royal heir, so great was the attention focused on it by the media and the musical community at large. The closer I came to completing the score, the more apparent it became that there would be no sneaking this opera out discreetly in workshop. As it turned out, an un-staged sing-through with piano accompaniment done in San Francisco five months before the actual premiere attracted critics from twelve national newspapers and was even mentioned (and sardonically dismissed) by Tom Brokaw on the NBC Nightly News.

“The Chairman Dances was an "out-take" of Act III of Nixon in China. Neither an ‘excerpt’ nor a ‘fantasy on themes from,’ it was in fact a kind of warm-up for embarking on the creation of the full opera. At the time, 1985, I was obliged to fulfill a long-delayed commission for the Milwaukee Symphony, but having already seen the scenario to Act III of Nixon in China, I couldn’t wait to begin work on that piece. So The Chairman Dances began as a "foxtrot" for Chairman Mao and his bride, Chiang Ch’ing, the fabled "Madame Mao," firebrand, revolutionary executioner, architect of China’s calamitous Cultural Revolution, and (a fact not universally realized) a former Shanghai movie actress. In the surreal final scene of the opera, she interrupts the tired formalities of a state banquet, disrupts the slow moving protocol and invites the Chairman, who is present only as a gigantic forty-foot portrait on the wall, to ‘come down, old man, and dance.’ The music takes full cognizance of her past as a movie actress. Themes, sometimes slinky and sentimental, at other times bravura and bounding, ride above in bustling fabric of energized motives. Some of these themes make a dreamy reappearance in Act III of the actual opera, en revenant, as both the Nixons and Maos reminisce over their distant pasts. A scenario by Peter Sellars and Alice Goodman, somewhat altered from the final one in Nixon in China, is as follows:

'Chiang Ch’ing, a.k.a. Madame Mao, has gate-crashed the Presidential Banquet. She is first seen standing where she is most in the way of the waiters. After a few minutes, she brings out a box of paper lanterns and hangs them around the hall, then strips down to a cheongsam, skin-tight from neck to ankle and slit up the hip. She signals the orchestra to play and begins dancing by herself. Mao is becoming excited. He steps down from his portrait on the wall, and they begin to foxtrot together. They are back in Yenan, dancing to the gramophone…'

And at the very end the gramophone needle sticks in a groove, repeating those few notes over and over until the end, a fitting motto for minimalism.

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“Grammophone,” “cracked record,” “needle stuck in the groove.” What is he talking about?

“Sigh…” Let’s go back a few years, before sound could be digitized or even made stereo. I’m no electronics expert, but I did grow up with this stuff. A “Grammophone” was merely an early record player, although the sound came out of a cone, not a speaker (Remember the RCA dog, ear preened to the cone?). We had a gramophone, although not the cute dog, and it plugged into to a radio console that took up as much space at that plasma TV in your living room. It was an improvement over the Edison roll, in which a stylus cut grooves into a wax roll when turned by hand crank and music was aimed into that cone, then a primitive microphone. Picture Bartok dragging one of those things around the Hungarian hill country recording music of the Magyar people. That’s exactly what he did; and used, transposed and composed masterworks based on those primitive recordings of that wonderful folk music.

Back to the gramophone, the sounds were recreated as grooves, corresponding to sound characteristics that entered the speaker “cone.” After the flat “record” had been invented (and was now powered by electricity) it circled on a turntable traveling at the incredible speed of 78 revolutions per minute. The playback needle swam along the grooves and reproduced what had been recorded through the speaker cone. Occasionally the needle would encounter a defective groove that it could not exit. The needle could only play that same groove (and short passage of music) over and over until the listener lifted the tone arm and replaced the needle a short distance further along. Yes, you missed everything in between. While it wasn’t really a “cracked” record, that’s what everybody called it at the time.

And that’s what Flatt meant when he described what happens at the end of “The Chairman Dances.” The needle sticks in that groove, and Adams lets it repeat as he fades it out. A heady dose of nostalgia to Chairman Mao and the Mrs. A fantastic metaphor for minimalism.

Please don’t ask me to explain how the Chairman climbed out of his picture and started dancing in the first place.

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The Metropolitan Opera will open a new production of Phillip Glass’s “Satyagraha” on April 11. The Met’s website calls it his “landmark 1980 work, set to text from the ancient Sanskrit scripture the Bhagavad Gita,… a moving account of Mahatma Gandhi’s formative experiences in South Africa, which transformed him into a great leader.”

The new production is already at London’s English National Opera, and pictures are posted on the Met website, metopera.com. Also at the site is a moving interview with Glass mostly about social responsibility, and here is his answer to the last question:

“Being inspired by social change through non-violence was authentic. I can identify with that idea as strongly today as I did when I wrote the opera. I was in my 40s at that time, so I wasn't like a kid. But I'm in a very different place now. For one thing, I've seen the world change in a dramatic and not particularly good way. We're in a more desperate situation than we were 30 years ago. I don't know what the power of art has to do in the world. Sometimes it's hard to see that it has any. And yet when I talk to people about this piece, it seems to have had a strong meaning for them... There's a line at the end of Satyagraha, when Krishna says, "I come into the world a man among men to put virtue on its feet again." I'm inspired to do opera with this hope.”

Gregory Barnes

Expecting good concerts the norm

Saturday, March 15 10 p.m.

The  search for a new music director for the S.C. Philharmonic is almost over. Only one more to go.
What those of us who have attended the concerts this year have come to expect, and maybe even take for granted, are good concerts where the music is clear, of the right volume, the programs varied and the energy level high.

That's the kind of concert Adam Flatt, the sixth candidate, led Saturday night. Flatt’s primary job is music director of the Denver Ballet and before that spent five years as associate conductor of the Denver Symphony. He’s also done a great deal of guest conducting, recently with the St. Louis Symphony.

Of the conductors who have been here so far, Flatt has the most dynamic presence on the podium. This may be due in part to his size  - he's 6-feet-4 - so when he sweeps his arms, they really sweep. But he really is an active conductor although not distracting at all.

The only talking he did during the concert was to introduce John Adams' "The Chairman Dances" from the 1987 opera "€œNixon in China. " He completely set up the scene of Madame Mao crashing a banquet and dancing with Mao and explained that the orchestra was to an extent imitating a gramophone. The introduction was a tiny bit more than the piece needed.

The audience, as one might expect with a newer work, gave a mixed response. The orchestra, which probably has never before played Adams, did an excellent job. Flatt had them all stand when they finished and they deserved the extra attention.

The rest of the program was not exactly ancient either. Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major was written in 1932 and Sergey Rachmaninoff’s "€œSymphonic Dances"€ in 1940.

With soloist Enrique Graf of Charleston the orchestra did well with the jazzy Ravel although this wasn’t a show-stopping performance. The Rachmaninoff provides some wonderful opportunities for various sections to shine and they did.

In spite of the tornado warning that were sweeping the area, the concert had a good turnout and there seemed to be more children in the audience than usual. So congratulations to those who braved the weather and those who brought kids.

I'€™ve talked to all of the candidates by telephone for a story and met briefly with all but one during the past six months. They’ve been extremely personable and accessible and just good people to talk to.

Flatt has called himself a €œclassical music nerd,€ who never had much interest in any other kind of music, but in many ways he was the most accessible and easy to talk to. He’s really passionate about the music, but also seems down to earth, and very interested in the job.

Following are the impressions of Deirdre Mardon, executive director of the Congaree Vista Guild. She's been to all the concerts this year and also been involved in the orchestra's painted violins fundraising project.

Jeffrey Day

I have been lucky enough to attend everyconcert this season, and I’ve come away from each one believing that the orchestra never sounded better. The Saturday concert was definitely the best so far, at least to my ears. Orchestra and conductor seemed to be one entity, performing seamlessly before an enthusiastic, receptive audience.
I attended the pre-concert lecture by Adam Flatt. I found him humorous, witty, and informative without being patronizing. He had chosen a program unlike what I’ve been used to hearing at the Philharmonic: John Adams, Ravel, and Rachmaninoff, all twentieth-century composers but as different from each other as possible.

    Adams is a minimalist, but I found the percussive elements very intricate and stimulating. The orchestra appeared to be having fun with this piece. Without Flatt’s clear explanation of what was happening, I would not have enjoyed it as much.

The highlight of the night for me was the Ravel. George Gershwin said, “Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in  America.” Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major is that composer’s homage to American jazz, and in the first movement, I heard the jazz energy, including many echoes of Gershwin himself. But the beautiful second movement touched me deeply, as it always does.

        Again, Flatt had prepared the audience for the Symphonic Dances, inviting us to listen for the sadness of the first movement, which at first seems to be simply a waltz but turns out to be a dance of death. The orchestra produced a lush, rich, romantic sound.
Thank goodness, I do not have to choose the Philharmonic’s next conductor; the decision will be excruciating. I liked many things about every program so far, but if I had a vote, I would cast mine for Adam Flatt.

 

 

Friday's rehearsal with Adam Platt

Friday night’s rehearsal was the Philharmonic’s third with Flatt, and I had not been able to attend either of the first two. Flatt began by reading straight through the first movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with soloist Enrique Graf. The orchestra had not had time to read or rehearse the piece in advance (usually a good idea) and difficulties in coordination surfaced immediately. Some of the principal winds (not all) seemed unprepared for their difficult solo passages, many in high registers, some very fast and some with awkward rhythms and passagework.

Flatt was careful not to criticize, however. He chose to repeat those passages several times without comment, apparently hoping for improvement each time. He offered a good-natured apology to first horn Bob Pruzin for repeating his extremely high solo so many times, and no doubt appreciated the fact that Bob played it perfectly every time. He zeroed in on violin fast notes (he wanted them shorter), rehearsed placement of syncopated notes in the bass section, adjusted volume of percussion and strings, and insisted on steady quarter notes.

The soloist, who is very good by the way, also asked for better coordination with the orchestra, especially at the beginning, and some improvement was made. Shortly after 8 PM they played straight through the beautiful slow movement and went directly to the lively finale, where problems similar to those in the first movement were again apparent.

After the break at 8:45, Flatt returned to the concerto without soloist, spending a few minutes more on each movement, and then moved to John Adams’ “The Chairman Dances.” He had specific passages in mind to rehearse and went methodically through each. There was considerable emphasis on changing dynamics–soft to loud and loud to soft–second violins worked with basses and were advised to “listen to the basses” as they played, and at one point a first violin passage was “great!”

At 9:15 Flatt asked for Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances and started with strings in a slow passage of the first dance. He asked for an expressive portamento (sliding connection) in one specific place and rehearsed that a time or two. Moving to one spot in the second dance, he focused on dynamics, once again those rapid changes from soft to loud and back. A short part of the third dance received attention for “balance” between sections and “texture” of orchestral sound. The rehearsal ended early, to the delight of the musicians, who have a very long day ahead on Saturday.

Flatt appeared calm and relaxed on the podium and occasionally showed intensity. His beat is crisp and clear, although the orchestra responded with flabby articulation and sluggish rhythm, especially in the Piano Concerto. This sprightly music demands that performers be literally on the edges of their chairs so that the listeners will be on the edges of theirs. On this Friday night there was, to be perfectly honest, way too much slouching.

Gregory Barnes

Afterthoughts on the Fifth Concert: Rachmaninoff on Paganini, other thoughts inspired by the concert

As we know from the fifth concert, Sergei Rachmaninoff composed a set of variations on the theme of the A minor Violin Caprice by Nicolo Paganini. Brahms and Liszt had done the same thing earlier; more recently, Lutoslawski, Blacher and Lloyd-Weber have contributed variations on this same tune. Rachmaninoff titled his a “Rhapsody” and it was a great success that helped put food on the table.

Rachmaninoff was widely regarded as the greatest pianist of his time, but really wanted to devote more of his efforts to composition and less to performing. A Russian exile after the Bolshevik revolution, his popularity took him all over Europe and the United States between wars, often playing his own music. Why the Paganini? Well, as the greatest pianist of his time, he could surely relate to Paganini as the greatest violinist of his own time (early 19th century), the tedium of being on the road away from the family, and the pressure to always be at the top of your game.

But the neat structure of Paganini’s theme and its snappy rhythm is apparently the main attraction to composers. Melodically, it zips around the first three notes of the A minor scale (in order: 1-1321) and surprisingly whips up to the fifth scale tone (E). Instantly dropping a complete octave, the zippy notes return, this time starting on the low E. Then it all happens again. Imaginative composers like Rachmaninoff use it as a starting point for all kinds of compositional shenanigans that are as delightful to hear, as they are impressive to analyze. In no way is it necessary to analyze them in order to take delight in them.

At the beginning, a short variation is actually heard before this theme is even stated, and that’s pretty unusual. It provokes a strange feeling of having started somewhere in the middle rather than the beginning. My other favorite example of starting in the middle is Elgar’s First Symphony, where the dignified, quiet march theme is immediately underway and you are instantly enveloped in it without setup or preparation.

In the Rhapsody, however, that beginning variation outlines the shape of the theme neatly and does set up the theme, much as a brief introduction. Overall, the Rhapsody is like a miniature concerto that the ear easily divides into three short movements.

Leopold Stokowski (remember Disney’s original “Fantasia”) led the Philadelphia Orchestra in the first performance. It was 1934, not in The City of Brotherly Love, but in Baltimore, the city of tasty crustaceans. Rachmaninoff himself was soloist and the work was an immediate hit. Pianists say it’s beastly difficult, but they continue to line up for every opportunity to perform it. There’s a story that, in his later years, Rachmaninoff required a glass of a certain liqueur just before the downbeat to bolster the old confidence.

Rachmaninoff recorded the Rhapsody with the Philadelphia and Stokowski in 1941, and you can download that classic performance for one Euro at classicalmusicmobile.com. The great Romantic theme is Variation Eighteen, and it shows up in several movies including “Story of Three Loves,” “Somewhere in Time” and “Sabrina.” It’s Paganini’s original tune, but thanks to Rachmaninoff’s genius (and a few of those compositional shenanigans: slow, upside down and in a major key), it is incredibly beautiful.

And then there’s the Dies Irae, the Day of Wrath medieval plainchant that appears solemnly early on, more ominously near the end. Were Rachmaninoff’s incredible performances like those of Paganini unthinkable without the collusion of the Devil? It’s tempting to think that’s why the chant is there, but remember that Rachmaninoff used it in other works, from the 1909 “Isle of the Dead” (where it certainly seems to fit) to the Symphonic Dances, his last composition from 1940. The Grove Dictionary ignores this, saying that the chant symbolizes death. Either way, it’s a sobering element among all those zippy tunes.

Grove also describes Rachmaninoff’s performances as always carefully planned, based on the theory that each piece has a “culminating point.” This “culmination,” Rachmaninoff wrote, “may be at the end or in the middle, it may be loud or soft; but the performer must know how to approach it with absolute calculation, absolute precision, because, if it slips by, then the whole construction crumbles, and the piece becomes disjointed and scrappy and does not convey to the listener what must be conveyed.”

But is this Rhapsody really a Rhapsody, or just a set of variations? What is a “rhapsody” anyway? After tracing the term back to the songs of the ancient Greek rhapsodists and Homer, how’s this for a non-definition in Grove: “The rhapsody had no regular form and was not confined to any particular medium. Early examples were restrained in character, but free fantasias of an epic, heroic or national character were later often given the title, and during the 19th century its utterance became more ebullient and high-flown and its emotion more uncontrolled.” Those rhapsodies by Liszt, Brahms, Enesco and others were by now mostly instrumental, and generally utilized Hungarian, Rumanian or Gypsy musical elements, very much “ebullient and high-flown,” freewheeling and full of sudden mood and tempo changes.

In that sense, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody demonstrates a connection to the unpredictable temperament that seems so tied to the word itself. And with no other working definition, I’ll go with the composer’s title and take it on faith that, to him, it was indeed a rhapsody. It remains so to its millions of admirers.

Speaking of admirers, and at the risk of being a tiny bit gruesome, Rachmaninoff is buried in New York State; specifically Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY in Westchester County. Yes, Rachmaninoff reposes in Valhalla, the legendary resting place of the souls of great heroes in Norse mythology. In this case, just between Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. You can find pictures and personal remembrances from several hundred Rachmaninoff lovers at: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=847. Among my favorite: “It is only because of you great Rachmaninoff that I put up with this pain filled life.”

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Paganini’s famous violin, nicknamed “il Cannone,” is on permanent display in the City Hall in Genova (Genoa). “The Canon” was made by Joseph Guarnerius del Jesu and came into Paganini’s possession around 1802. If you ask, a city official will unlock the case and let you look at it. But you can’t grab it and start playing unless you win the International Paganini Violin Competition. You can find excellent pictures of il Cannone at the website of a luthier and local violin shop: http:www.giordanoviolins.com/english/cannone02.html. Other good pictures are linked from the city’s official website (in Italiano): www.comunegenova.it.

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Have you ever imagined living in a different time and place? I plead guilty to this mental whimsy, and Maestro Commanday’s concert reminded me of one of my favorite combinations: Paris, late 1800s-early 1900s.

Debussy and Ravel were at the height of their powers. Diaghilev, famed impresario of the Russian Ballet, was staging amazing productions of new music that delighted and sometimes shocked the world. Some of the most shocking erupted from the pen of Stravinsky. Ballet legend Nijinsky danced Fokine’s choreography before sets designed and painted by Bakst, Matisse, Cocteau and Picasso. This is but a short list of the creative spirit of that time and place, and it included so many more: de Falla, Prokofiev, Milhaud, Satie, Poulenc, even Richard Strauss. Wagner was gone, but his spirit was everywhere.

Saint-Saens was still organist in a Paris church and giving piano recitals¬–Proust attended one and wrote a glowing review. Faure was director of the legendary Paris Conservatory. The elaborate new home for opera (now the old) had just opened and Massenet was still cranking them out. Karsavina danced the very first “Firebird” in 1910, three years before the infamous “Riot of Spring.” (Excuse the pun, couldn’t resist.)

Nearby waited a whole tribe of gifted French composers, including Ibert, Honegger and Auric. And let’s not forget the writers and poets. Bizet’s son went to school with Proust (greatest novelist of all time; don’t argue with me); the divine Marcel, dreaming of the brightest salons and the smartest people of the era. Rimbaud and Verlaine sat at cafes creating masterpieces, at least until the latter shot the former (a superficial wound). And then there was Rilke, the early filmmakers, M. Eiffel of tower fame, and we haven’t even mentioned the sculptors, the painters and Impressionism, Surrealism, Dada, etc. The list just goes on and on and on.

But this wonderful moment in time did not. World War I would send it reeling overnight. After a brilliant but ephemeral comeback, the Second World War, waiting in the wings, did it again.

It makes you wonder how wonderful the world would be… without war.

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Diaghilev, impresario extrordinario, was a true legend of a man and still arouses my astonishment. His gift in Paris was to bring the greatest artists together as no one had ever done before. After the Russian revolution, the Soviets tried to get him to return. They failed, and then of course condemned him. A man of lavish, sophisticated artistic enterprise, he dressed to kill, but lived in more or less plain, spartan conditions. Wasn’t this unusual? Don’t flamboyant artists need to work in flamboyant, artistic surroundings? Clive James explored that recently in an essay in “Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts.”

(A brief digression on forgetting: Have you forgotten the great American writer who called his native land “The United States of Amnesia?” Answer at the end of this post.)

When asked about his tiny bedroom that contained only a bed, Diaghilev responded rhetorically: “Why should I waste my imagination on myself?” After all, he was an artist who combined, masterfully of course, art forms of others. But the remark defines his vital core of being, as does the arthritic Renoir’s order, “Tie the brush into my hand,” and Richard Strauss’ screaming at the orchestra, “Louder! Louder! I can still hear the singers!”

Remember that Beethoven lived humbly, to say the least, in squalor to put it more factually, yet rose every day to create unparalleled sonic beauty and drama.

Not Wagner. Wagner lived beyond his means as a matter of principle. It took Mad King Ludwig to keep him in the style “to which he had no intention of becoming unaccustomed,” writes James. Verdi, the down to earth composer-businessman could have “slept in Diaghilev’s spartan bedroom and got up in the morning to compose. Wagner would have thought he was in jail.”

Nor Stravinsky. His New York apartment was in the same luxurious building that Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey lived in, and more recently Angelina Jolie. Like Diaghilev, Stravinsky knew how to live… and die. His 1971 funeral was prime-time news, the coffin floating on a gondola to its final resting place on Venice’s lovely and lonely island of gravestones, Isola San Michele, next to, of course, Diaghilev.

[Answer to “United States of Amnesia”: Gore Vidal]

Gregory Barnes

Commanday commands the concert and crowd

Saturday, Feb. 9 10:30 p.m.

    When I chatted with S.C. Philharmonic Orchestra music director candidate David Commanday last Monday, he talked about doing more “staging” of concerts, such as using live video feeds focusing on the players and the conductor.
     I like the idea, but  based upon Commanday (the fifth of seven candidates conducting this season) and the orchestra’s performance Saturday night they don’t need big screens. They could be seen and heard loud, clearly and well in the engaging and warmly-received performance of well-known works by Stravinsky, Debussy, Rachmaninoff and Faure.    
    That these were fairly well-known, and sometimes overused pieces, took nothing away from the concert. It’s likely that Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite” would have gotten a standing ovation even if only played passably, but this deserved the applause.
    The bigger question is, could he and the orchestra maintain the same level of performance on a full season, or several seasons, with a wider variety and more risk-taking works?
     The tremendous sound of “Firebird” was quite a change from an orchestra that often sounds underpowered, but it did just as well on the beautiful music by Faure. Piano soloist Inna Faliks was dynamic but not overdramatic on Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43.” The crowd seemed to be responding mostly to her playing, but the orchestra deserved just as many cheers.    Almost never did the orchestra overpower her or hold back to much.
    My listening companion Saturday night was Ralph Rynes, a neurologist and big music fan, but not a big fan of the philharmonic. “It’s no secret I’d rather go to the USC Symphony,” he told me. This was the first time he’d heard the philharmonic this season and was as impressed as most everyone else seemed to be. He was particularly taken with how the orchestra was able to handle the changing moods, volume and tempo within each work and throughout the concert program.
    Commanday was active on the podium and conducted the Debussy’s prelude to “Afternoon of a Faun” and “Firebird” without the score. He’s the first of the candidates to work without the music in front of him. He also earned good will for moving the big conductor’s platform himself because it was too far away from the piano. Standing up, he said, “I like to be close.” And he felt close to the orchestra which itself felt close to the audience which hasn’t always been the case.
     Commanday is the oldest of the candidates; a middle aged white guy who conducts the Peoria, Ill., orchestra, which is much like the S.C. Philharmonic. Many of his competitors are much younger and have more impressive resumes, and include several women and people of Asian origin. One can’t help see him as the John McCain to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but that’s not saying anything terrible about him.  - Jeffrey Day

David Commanday's First Rehearsal

Commanday’s program should be interesting for musicians as well as audience. Much of the music should also be familiar to both, but will require considerable mental and physical commitment from the orchestra to succeed. All his choices were either composed for dance, or later choreographed. The 1919 Suite from Stravinsky’s “Firebird” Ballet, for example, is in every orchestra’s repertoire these days, but it’s not as simple as opening a box, taking it out and there you have it. A successful performance requires preparation of course, and, well, mental and physical commitment.

Commanday showed plenty of both Tuesday night in the Koger Center rehearsal room. We shall see about the orchestra.

And then there’s the French music: Debussy’s Prelude to "The Afternoon of a Faun” and three selections from Faure’s exquisite ballet “Pelleas and Melisande.” To my knowledge, this band has played little French music (if any) in the last decade, and Commanday earns high marks from me for stepping into this rich and varied musical tradition. Here, the ensemble will need to play with uncharacteristic beauty and subtle expression to convince.

But Rachmininoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” was first on Commanday’s rehearsal agenda. (Pianist Inna Faliks will be the soloist on Saturday.) It only took three or four minutes before he stopped to advise strings to “focus” the bow into the string and use more bow on the fast notes. In that main (Paganini) theme, he asked that the longer notes on the downbeats be warmed up from the left hand, meaning a tad of vibrato. Taking it from the top again, he worked into the third variation, stopped again and had the strings play alone. Here he asked second violins to play more spiccato; that is, a bouncier bow stroke.

Do we see a pattern here in the early going?

A fine cellist, Commanday is well qualified to make these basic as well as subtle suggestions to strings. One of the latter came when they arrived at the col legno passage, where the bow stick must bounce directly onto the string for a really crispy effect. His advice: Tilt the stick at a less acute angle that will allow some of the bow hairs to strike the string along with the stick. Result? Still crispy, but a little louder.

If you know this music, you’ll recall that Rachmininoff injects the familiar Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) chant from a medieval Mass of the Dead. (Paganini was such a fiendishly great violinist that he had to have been inspired by The Devil, and even the great Paganini will someday face his day of reckoning!) Commanday rehearsed that brass chorale and got it more menacing right away, but soon returned his attention to strings where longer notes failed to sustain, especially on down bows; that’s when the right arm opens from the elbow. (You will see this issue mentioned several times in the various blogs here.) When the very soft tremolando (fast shaking bows) came, he advised strings to “stay away from the bridge” to keep it soft. Cellos got some advice on vibrato as well.

When the main Romantic theme came (you’ll recognize this immediately even if you don’t know the piece), he sang it passionately, accompanied by expressive arm gestures. When the Dies Irae returned near the end, it needed the same attention as earlier, as brass had forgotten what they had rehearsed the first time and strings hadn’t paid attention to what the brass were doing anyway.

At 8:30 they read the Introduction to the Firebird Suite by Stravinsky. When done, they returned to the beginning. Laying down his baton and asking strings to use “half that much bow,” he and the orchestra eventually created that mysterious tonal aura Stravinsky had in mind, “A forest,” Commanday whispered, “without air or light.”

The big string sforzando that often signals the Firebird’s first entrance, calls for a sudden attack with the bow. He had them practice it many times to get the exact “whoosh” he wanted: a really fast but light pull of the bow. Just before the break, he tuned a treacherous horn chord carefully, singing each pitch accurately for them.

After break he read straight through the Round Dance of the Princesses, the Infernal Dance and moved directly into the Berceuse and Finale. His tempo was very steady, although the orchestra tended to pull forward. Otherwise, the group seemed to read it quite well. Reaching the end, Commanday went back to the Princesses who, he said, “were virginal, but very beautiful. They don’t go without vibrato,” he advised the strings, who chuckled but got the point. We’ll see if they remember on Saturday.

They got back to the Infernal Dance for a little more work, but changed to Debussy’s Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun” for the final 15 minutes. The reading was beautiful and dreamy in solo flute and clarinet, pretty ordinary in the accompaniment. “You followed well,“ Commanday complimented at the end, “mostly we must work on balance.”

Commanday appears to be a very determined worker, to put it mildly. He exudes intensity and sticks to his subject verbally, or at least he did Tuesday night. His shoulder and mental focus are firmly to the grindstone. His ear is uncannily fixed on pitch, quality of sound in strings and total orchestral precision that included attention to those farthest away: percussion, piano and harp.

He discarded the baton several times to work things out. The freedom it gives his arms and hands is very effective in generating what he wants and stirring the orchestral pot.

Commanday leads the Peoria Symphony Orchestra and before that was Music Director of the prestigious Greater Boston Youth Orchestras. He has conducted a number of other orchestras, including The Las Vegas Philharmonic, The National Symphony, The Israel Philharmonic, and The New Hampshire Philharmonic. A Peoria Journal Star music critic wrote in 2005, "Commanday... has soul. He takes risks. And he has what it takes to make his musicians soar." From a 2002 review in the same paper: "Under Commanday’s leadership, the orchestra has become a versatile instrument, able to do the classics as well as the standards, able to soar the heights and have a little fun, too."

Maybe I shouldn’t even bring this up, but he really didn’t look like he was having fun Tuesday night, his face a tight concentration of intensity and determination.

But it was a darn good rehearsal. Maybe that’s what this orchestra needs.

Gregory Barnes