an orchestra’s life

Tonight is the last concert of our 2006-2007 classical subscription series (we’ve got two more after this: the Evelyn Nagel donor concert and a runout to George Fox University in Newberg). It’s a fitting culmination to this season in several ways.

First, we play Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony. This is a piece which the orchestra has played many times, which audiences have heard many times, and which is often not performed at a very high standard. When we’ve done the piece with previous music directors and guest conductors, it has often been relegated to “throw-away” status, just a quick run through a couple times before the concerts and then on to the meat of the program. Not so this time. Carlos has played up the inherent drama of the two movement work, and carefully worked on the pacing of the climaxes and the subtle changes in tempo. It makes it much for interesting to perform, because it isn’t like being the equivalent of a human metronome, just trying to keep an exact, unyielding tempo. It’s also nice to hear the usual stellar solo playing of our principal clarintet, Yoshinori Nakao, and of our new principal oboe Martin Hebert featured in this piece. Overall, the performances show how far we’ve come in this bread-and-butter late Classical Germanic repertoire.

Second, we’re premiering the Symphony No. 12 of Oregon composer Robert Kyr. It’s based upon the 15th century plainsong “L’homme armé“, or The Armed Man. I have to admit that the piece has grown on me over the two performances and several rehearsals thus far. It is a heartfelt piece that drew tears and major applause from our audiences the last two nights. It’s good to hear a major new piece get a warm reception. As for us in the orchestra, it is still amazing to me how quickly we get these new pieces together with much greater understanding, precision and flexibility than in years past. Clearly, we’re an orchestra that has and is growing constantly in artistic stature.

Last, we play one of the magnum opuses of the literature, Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben”. When we first started rehearsing, we ran through the piece from beginning to end without stopping. This barely was possible the last time we performed the piece, nearly ten years ago, with James Depreist. The power and subtlety of the orchestra are really brought to the fore here, and there have been some moments in these first two concerts which have taken my breath away. The feeling backstage after the performances has been great – we know that we pulled it off, and there is a great sense of satisfaction and of knowing that we nailed the piece. Of note is the presence of our guest concertmaster for this week, Elisa Barston, who is playing the huge solos with skill, emotion and aplomb.