By Bryce Christensen
Enraptured by “a pleasure in the pathless woods,” enfolded
in “a rapture on the lonely shore,” Lord Byron swore that when he stood by “the
deep sea,” he heard “music in its roar.”
“I love not man the less,” he declared, “but Nature more.” Something of Byron’s poetic appreciation for
the compelling music pervading nature animated both performers and listeners in
Cedar City’s Heritage Center on November 10th, when the Orchestra of
Southern Utah (OSU) performed a concert on the theme of “Natural Legacy” as the
second installment of a season devoted to exploring the theme of Musical Legacy.
In his opening remarks, OSU President Harold Shirley invited
listeners weary of the harsh cacophony of recent politics into “Nature’s
Haven.” And for an hour and half, the
audience welcomed that invitation and enjoyed that much-needed haven.
With OSU Director and Conductor Xun Sun still on sabbatical
leave, assistant conductor Dr. Adam Lambert took the podium as the evening’s conductor. And just as Carylee Zwang did for OSU’s
October American Legacy concert, Lambert evidenced impressive mastery of the
music on the program, leading the musicians under his baton with authoritative
poise and confidence. It can only please
Cedar City’s music lovers that OSU is developing musical talent not only in the
ranks of its skilled instrumentalists but also in its much-smaller cadre of
conductors.
As a musical canvas that records the splendors of nature
throughout the year, Vivaldi’s Four
Seasons certainly deserved its place as the opening number of this
evening’s program. Given the calendaring
of this particular concert and given the way Vivaldi captures with particular
poignancy the rich beauties of a season at once exciting and melancholy, it was
apt that OSU chose to perform the Fall segment
of this wonderful composition.
To be sure, the Nature that Vivaldi visits—particularly in
the lively first movement of Fall—seems
rather distant from the pathless woods of raw Nature that inspired the Romantic
Byron. The Nature Vivaldi initially
carries listeners into seems to be the Nature surrounding a regal dance in an
exquisitely ordered ornamental garden of the sort that pleased 18th
century aristocrats and neoclassical poets.
While listening to Vivaldi’s perfectly crafted musical phrases,
listeners may indeed have thought of the neoclassical poet Alexander Pope’s high
regard for “Nature to advantage dressed.”
And the advantageous dress that Vivaldi gives to Nature is precisely the
kind of becoming dress that elegant 18th-century dancers might have
worn as they executed a high energy haute
dance in a perfectly manicured garden of shrubs and trees and late-blooming
flowers.
But the second movement modulates into pensive and reflective
passages, suggestive of a seasonal sense of loss and muted sadness, an autumnal
awareness that the life that animated spring and summer is ending. Vivaldi here
gives listeners a feel for a season of falling leaves and fatal frosts.
Listeners could only appreciate—even marvel at—the way guest
violin soloist Heather Wilhelm (OSU’s gifted Concertmaster) transitioned from
technically demanding measures of dazzling rapidity in the opening movement to
the nuanced tenderness of the more languid second movement—and then
transitioned again to the tight cadencing of a concluding movement reprising
the sprightliness of the opening movement.
Highlighting the brilliance of Wilhelm’s performance, the
orchestra as a whole engaged in a dynamic musical dialogue with the soloist,
with cellist Leah Brown emerging as a secondary soloist in this beautiful
back-and-forth.
As those in the audience listening to this masterful
performance of Vivaldi’s work, they may have realized anew why this pungent season
of the year has inspired deeply evocative poetry by Keats, Pushkin, and Du Fu,
poetry reflecting the deep emotions that well up in the heart of those who
experience Nature when summer passes into fall.
The evening’s second number shifted from the stylized Nature
of Europe’s formal gardens to the exotic Nature of 19th century
India, depicted in the “Flower Duet,” a marvelous opening-act vocal number from
Léo Delibes’ Lakmé. In this richly expressive song, the title
character (the daughter of a Brahmin priest) joins her servant Mallika in
gathering riverside flowers, hoping to find in the riparian life—song birds and
swans surrounded by jasmine, roses and lotuses -- some respite from fears about
Lakmé’s father, threatened in the ritual practice of his Hindu faith by the incursion
of British imperialists.
Guest vocalists Jackie Riddle-Jackson and Terri Metcalf-Peterson
combined their voices in mesmerizing fashion in performing this number. When singing alone, both sopranos
Riddle-Jackson and Metcalf-Peterson compellingly conveyed the pathos and
passion of Delibes’ artistry. But when
they fused their voices in singing together, the tightly knit ethereal
harmonies were utterly irresistible.
After the intermission, the orchestra returned from the Nature
of India to the Nature of Europe. But in
performing Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, his Pastoral Symphony, the orchestra was
hardly returning to Vivaldi’s royal gardens.
With Beethoven as their guide, listeners rambled through Europe’s rural
countryside, perhaps not pristine wilderness, but still a natural setting only
partially under human cultivation. As
the opening stanzas of this beguiling number introduce the infectious refrain
that will surface again and again, listeners soon catch the lilt and trill of
birdsong, the babble of brooks, the swelling of river currents, and the
stirring of pleasant zephyrs.
The nature Beethoven conjures in this magical number is
hardly devoid of human life. But the
humans who appear are those humans most attuned to Nature’s deep-down primal
forces: they are the peasant farmers and shepherds whose celebratory revels
give the third and fifth movements their joyous tenor. To be sure, both natural serenity and human
delight must yield when, in the fourth movement, the thunder of an
awe-inspiring storm erupts. But rustic
bliss and Arcadian calm return in the soothing tranquility of the restorative
conclusion.
A praiseworthy collective achievement melding the talents of
string, wind, brass, and percussion instrumentalists, this performance of
Beethoven’s great composition will long sweeten the memories of all who shared
in it. Shining out of the overall
excellence of the performance, a number of short but laudable solos in this
final number deserve mention, with Brad Gregory coaxing penetrating tones from
his oboe, Adrienne Read drawing filigreed luminescence from her flute, Pete Atkins
plumbing shadowed profundities with his French horn, and Lydia Field summoning
rumbling power from her timpani.
In performing an entire symphony as complex and challenging
as this iconic masterpiece, the Orchestra of Southern Utah has again demonstrated
its artistic strength and maturity. To
be sure, the attentive listener heard a few small wobblings in the performance. But why obsess over trivial blemishes in a
musical canvas this large and majestic?
Better by far to risk a minor defect here and there than to settle for
the safety of a truncated work of only a movement or two. By performing this masterwork in toto and by
playing it perhaps not perfectly but extremely well, Dr. Lambert and the
orchestra have given the music lovers of Cedar City a new reason to give thanks
for the tradition OSU is building.
And part of the thanks for an evening opening a multi-faceted
perspective on the treasures of Nature properly goes to the George S. and
Delores Doré Eccles Foundation, a sponsor or this delightful evening of
music. Such generous support of the arts
enriches the entire community.
