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