How Orchestral Music Survives—Even Prevails!--in a Pandemic
By Bryce Christensen
Lamenting the numerous symphony concerts cancelled due to COVID-19, Anthony McGill of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra remarked, “It is tough for any musician who is used to [making] music in a group. We communicate with each other and we communicate with the audience. When you take that away, it’s very hard to know how to proceed.” With October 10th’s opening concert of a new season, the Orchestra of Southern Utah assured Cedar City’s music-lovers that even in the midst of a pandemic, its directors and musicians know “how to proceed.” Because of the risk that bringing an audience into the Heritage Center would pose, OSU prudently chose to do its first concert as an online transmission. But listeners who accessed that concert quickly realized that even in a cyber performance, OSU creates music alive with energy, filled with fire!
In his opening remarks for the concert, OSU President Harold Shirley acknowledged the strangeness of an orchestra performing “in an empty theater digitally streaming to an audience we cannot see.” Yet with a firm commitment to the unseen listeners who constitute “our real reason for playing,” Shirley rejoiced in the launching of a new season, dedicated to the theme Romanza: “ a celebration of music that refuses to remain silent, especially in a world of uncertainty, where it can provide . . . an anchor for the soul suffering under lockdown.”
Those “suffering under lockdown” knew they had found relief at the sound of the first measures of the evening’s opening number: Vivaldi’s Concerto in D Major for Lute. Its first movement brimming with the irrepressible Allegro energy that listeners recognize as Vivaldi’s signature, this number instantly transported listeners into the radiant heat of a concert devoted to “Fiery Romance.”
In his opening remarks, Shirley had suggested that “the chemistry of a live audience would help us play better.” However, OSU director and conductor Xun Sun wrought such alchemy with his baton on this cyber-mediated evening that magical sparks flew, kindling a blaze that flared up among the OSU strings (the only part of the orchestra playing in this opening number) from the very first notes of the Vivaldi composition.
Flickering with genial warmth, the musical flames generated during the Vivaldi number rose with enchanting intensity from the fingers of guest soloist Jon Yerby, who generated from his dulcet-voiced guitar all the musical heat Vivaldi originally called forth from the strings of the 17th-century lute. Swiftly but surely, Yerby’s fingers flew during the highly kinetic first movement, drawing from his instrument’s taut strings a luminous stream of Allegro musical fire. Repeatedly, the fulgor of Yerby’s guitar dazzled listeners with its brilliance, gave way to an answering flare of zestful sound from the orchestral strings, then flared into solo prominence again. When the second movement slowed into a reflective and meditative Largo, the musical fire subsided to the white coals of intense thought, reflected by the nuanced and mellow strains rising alternately from Yerby and from the orchestra’s string section. But the heat in the coals of the Largo second movement burst forth into the rapid crackling of a third movement matching the first movement in its Allegro intensity, building to joyous pyrotechnics.
The evening’s musical fire lost none of its heat but burned with a sinister cast when OSU Assistant Conductor Carylee Zwang took the podium to lead the entire orchestra--now including the brass, wind, and percussion sections--in Manuel de Falla’s Ritual de Fuego. A movement from the ballet El Amor Brujo, this unearthly number carried mesmerized listeners into a frenetic dance of exorcism, as a desperate gypsy beauty whirls sound the campfire with the ghost of her dead husband until he’s consumed by the flames. With Zwang’s potent wand casting an early Halloween spell, OSU’s musicians-magicians together conjured up all the dark sorcery of this eerie number. Zwang and all the instrumentalists under her direction deserve praise for conveying the black necromancy of De Falla’s composition. But special plaudits go to soloists Heather Wilhelm and Lindsay Szczesny on the violin and Sunny Chen. These three soloists evinced outstanding skill in weaving their musical enchantment.
Remaining on the podium for the concert’s final number, Zwang left behind Andalusia’s dark fires of incantation as she skillfully guided the orchestra into the vibrant and lively heat of the Mexican dance hall that Aaron Copland depicts in his tone poem El Salon Mexico. The fiery heat of this Latin dance-floor number rises from many sources, as befits music from the spirited land of Mariachi bands and salsa rhythms. Listeners indeed detect in Copland’s variegated composition the refined cadence of Mexico’s well-heeled elite brushing against the bare-foot vitality of its peasants. But it is clearly the peasants whose raw verve provides the fire in this selection’s simmering beat. Given how much Latin diversity that beat carries, it is not surprising that sustaining it required a remarkable parade of soloists. The exceptional level of musical artistry manifested in the solo by clarinetist Kortne Bradshaw was maintained in praiseworthy fashion in solos by trumpeters Gary Player and Will Zeller, oboists Ashley Davis and Patrice Ramsay, flutist Sunni Jackson, English horn Drew Holland, and pianist Sunny Chen. Together, these soloists provide convincing evidence that OSU has attracted a level of musical talent exceptional in a regional orchestra. Such talent helps explain how in this final number, Zwang and the musicians under her could bring all the calor of a Mexican dance floor to a concert performed more than six hundred miles north of the border.
No doubt, it took some time on this October evening for cyber listeners to adjust to seeing an orchestra’s director, instrumentalists, and even soloists in masks. But before long they recognized a commitment to music that could not be masked, could not be hidden. Even in a time of COVID restrictions, this is an orchestra that--despite all the obstacles--is showing its appreciative listeners that they know “how to proceed.” This is an orchestra that knows not only how to proceed but even how to do so with a musical fire that warms the hearts and illuminates the spirits of all who feel it. Those who allocate Cedar City’s Recreation-Arts-Parks revenue—along will all of OSU’s other sponsors--deserve praise for providing fuel for the heartening blaze of this pandemic-defying concert.
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The concert is online at myosu.org until October 17, 2020
Photos of the Orchestra of Southern Utah at the recording for the concert:
Rehearsals
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