Anna Clyne's "Rewind"
Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe, Suite No. 2
Lever du jour
Pantomime (Les amours de Pan et Syrinx)
Danse generale (Bacchanale)
Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 in E minor
I. Adagio - Allegro molto
II. Largo
III. Scherzo: Molto Vivace
IV. Allegro con fuoco
It was a good two hours of music, and I can only imagine the pain some of these players were in after they were finished. Especially violists and violinists. It is pretty tiring to hold your arms up in the air for two hours. I know that my shoulders would be on fire (but that's probably because I play a 16.5 inch viola and I slouch....) Anyways, I have a lot of respect and admiration for the stamina that this ensemble displayed.
There were so many basses! It was like a bass army out there! I kept hearing these really low string notes and I was like how are the celli playing that? and then I realized it wasn't celli, it was basses. It was a magical moment and it happened about ten times. Being a former bass player, it's pretty cool to have a bass section that can actually be heard. There were nine of them. Nine. They were a massive wooden instrument barricade.
That's what nine basses look like. You don't mess around with them.
Anyways, now let me describe the actual music they played.
First off, it was Anna Clyne's "Rewind" which, the program notes say, is centered around the idea of an analog tape, one of these things,
With the idea of a VCR in my head I made the deduction that it was some sort of apocalyptic horror movie being rewound. One with lots of jump-out-and-scare-you moments. I felt kind of like I was fighting the piece because I didn't to get all wrapped up in it because it was too unsettling. I was watching the orchestra like a hawk so that I knew when they would do the loud percussive thing that made me jump when I wasn't prepared. I thought it was odd, because I don't think something as simple as rewinding a tape should be that disturbing.
But the fact that I had such a strong reaction to the piece shows how good it was. I remember hearing the concertmaster of the RPO (Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra), Juliana Athayde, saying that the purpose of music is to make the listener feel something - and I definitely felt something. A neutral reaction, that is to say no reaction, to a piece of music is the worst reaction.
It's pretty obivous that the beauty of this piece isn't in its ear-pleasing (or soul-pleasing for that matter) quality, but rather how the mood and nature of this piece is achieved.
That noise that sounded like feedback from a microphone - that I thought was some electrical/sythesized noise is actually made by using a bow
on these things called crotales, which are like tiny little bell-things that look like symbols. They produce a high ringing sound when hit with a mallet, and when you use run a bow along the side of them they sound like feedback. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video of that in action, but here's crotales with a mallet:
this was too perfect to resist.
That strange sounding recording that played at the end was actually a recording of the piece played backwards at high speed. I didn't hear any Satanic messages, did you?
The next piece the IC Symphony (made up entirely of students by the way) played was this beautiful suite from a Ravel ballet.
After a night of despair over the loss of his beloved, Daphnis awakes to see that Chloe has been rescued by some shepherdessses (with the help of Pan). They mime the tale of Pan and a woman he loved (who got turned into a set of reed pipes) and it's a happy ending.
Suite 2 is the part from Daphnis waking up in the morning till the end.
Lever du jour (daybreak) made me think of a tropical island somewhere, where all the birds are starting to wake up and call to each other. It's got white sands, of course, and the sunrise is golden. Sometimes, certain pieces of music make me think of a certain color - that's where I got golden. It's also got a sky blue color that doubles as the ocean. It's cool and lush, and nothing short of gorgeous. Kind of like the Neverland from the Disney movie. (pirates and mystical-y creatures)
I got the strongest picture/emotion from the first part of the suite, definitely. Ravel really hit the nail on the head with the morningtime feeling. I wonder why that is. What is it about this certain set of sounds that made me think "morning".
Speaking of Disney movies, I'm not sure why Chloe was so upset to be kidnapped by pirates. If you get the right pirate, things can be pretty great...
c'mon, being kidnapped by him would be a dream come true Oh, here's some more Johnny referenes for you. The low, slide-y, chromatic thing in the basses/celli(?) in the very beginning of the lever du jour reminded me of the music that appears in the Roman Polanski's movie The Ninth Gate, in which our dear friend Johnny plays a rare book dealers who stumbles on a strange, Satanic murder mystery. The music is great and it's where a lot of the atmosphere comes from. It was composed by Wojciech Kilar, and it's pretty cool, and by that I mean really cool.
Anyways....
The last piece in the program was the Dvorak's New World Symphony, written while he was in America, and he tried to create the American version of nationalistic music - which was a big trend in Europe that drew on folk tunes and motifs for inspiration. Dvorak used the Native American music he heard in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, and apparently, did not question the authenticity of his source. He heard "Negro Spirituals" from a black student of his and based his melodies and motifs from these.
This piece was my favorite from the concert, and I'm pretty sure that the reason for that was that I've played the fourth movement of it before. There is some sort of connection that occurs when you play a piece of music, and you cannot get it unless you play it. It's somewhere between reading a book and writing the book. It's the performance I suppose.
Performance is especially awesome when you're in such a formidable an ensemble as a symphony. You are your fellows can produce a massive amount of sound.
This piece is more special to me because of how and where I performed it. Two years ago, in April, I traveled to Ireland with the youth orchestra I was in, HYSO (Hochstein Youth Symphony Orchestra)., and it was AWESOME. The last movement of the Dvorak symphony was one of the pieces we played when we toured around Ireland.
And look what I found! Our Tour Blog!! I had totally forgotten about this. I think that now I'm going to look through the whole thing and cry because it's over.....
Okay, I'm back.
Look, there's me, in the back right corner! Me and my jet-lag face... Anyways, the most memorable performance of mvt 4 from the New World Symphony we did was in this old church in Galway. The beginning of the piece echoed like we were playing in a cave. But I guess we were, because it was this cavernous stone church, and it was (really hard to stay together) awesome an echo. I found a picture of us in the church, but it doesn't at all do justice to the size of the church. You're looking at the front door area, the back of the pews is where we were.
I'm in this one too, good luck finding me
That's my cool story.
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