Photo: Mike Lloyd/The Oregonian
We’ve done the first two performances of Tomas Svoboda’s Vortex for Orchestra, and the final performance is tonight. It’s a piece which seems to be growing in power and depth with each time we perform it. It needs to be recorded by our orchestra.
Tomas is such a unique person. He’s so self-effacing, modest, almost Nordic in his introvertedness. He’s a ranked chess player. But he has depths, such depths. Vortex is one of those rare pieces where it feels like one is getting a view directly into the innermost soul of the composer. I hope this piece gets performances around the country and the world – it deserves to be heard, and its message absorbed … and heeded.
The Brahms performances have been so much fun. As someone remarked to me last night, Carlos “gets” this symphony. It is an absolutely poetic interpretation, and the orchestra has responded with that so hard to define combination of muscularity and flexibility, like the top dancers and gymnasts do. Our wind section is so damn good these days, I dare say that it’s the rival of the best in the country at this point. Particularly noteworthy the last couple nights were Carin Miller, principal bassoon, John Cox, principal horn, and Yoshi Nakao, principal clarinet. Great solos, and tremendous ensemble playing from all of the rest of the wind section. The low brass also layed down some velvety, burnished tones in the 2nd movement. Good stuff.
If you haven’t been to either of the other concerts of this run, you owe it to yourself to come down to Schnitzer Hall tonight, the band is sounding fine.