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oregon bach festival report – part one

On Tuesday night, the Oregon Bach Festival gave the first concert of its modern orchestra, the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra (there might be an additional ‘festival’ missing in there, but it bothers me, so I’m leaving it out). It was a special concert, one of two that I can recall during my time at the festival, where a composer was also the conductor, leading the orchestra in works of his own and others. The first such occasion was the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. This time, our august conductor/composer was Sir James MacMillan, a Scottish composer of great renown. Those of you who frequent Oregon Symphony concerts will know of him through performances we’ve done in Portland – most recently of his percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel with soloist Colin Currie (which you can listen to at the OSO audio page), and a few years back, The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, a remarkable piece for orchestra, based upon the torture and confession of an accused witch in 17th century Scotland.

The program last night was just about equal parts MacMillan and works of other composers. The common theme was the British Isles. Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture opened the concert with perhaps the only bright moment of the evening. The strings provide the restless waters of the cold North Atlantic, while the winds and brass declaim in stentorian tones the majesty of the unsettled land and seascape. Clarinetists Johnny Teyssier and Todd Kuhns were standouts in their melodic moments. Immediately after the Mendelssohn, the mood turned somber with MacMillan’s For Sonny (2011, rev. 2013) which was commissioned for the remembrance of a friend’s tragic loss of a very young child. Long moments of near silence, punctuated with delicate, almost playful but more melancholic pizzicati created a sense of loss and what might have been. With the next piece, Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, Op. 110 (arr. Barshai) we were brought from death on a small, intimate scale, to death of a massive scale, with all of the psychic ramifications that entails. String quartet arrangements for string orchestra are almost never as effective as the original (in this case, Shostakovich’s 8th quartet), but this particular version may prove the exception. The added weight of multiple players on a part, and the addition of two double basses, make the piece no less unwieldy (in fact, tempos in the two fast movements were rather brisk – much more so that Barshai’s own recording of this arrangement), and simply add to the emotional heft of the work, in my opinion. Standouts last night were principal cellist Nancy Ives and concertmaster Sarah Kwak, with their beautiful and harrowing solos throughout the piece.

After the intermission, the music of Benjamin Britten was featured via his settings of English folk songs, A Time There Was…, Op. 90. Written in the last two years of his life, there is more of a sense of melancholy and the weight of worries of life imprinted upon these settings. Harpist Jennifer Craig was at her most celestial in The bitter whey. The woodwinds and percussion were delightfully martial in Hankin Booby. The violins were fierce and virtuosic Celtic fiddlers in Hunt the Squirrel, while English hornist Henry Ward was wonderfully plangent in his mournful solos in Lord Melbourne. I have yet to encounter a work by Britten that I don’t like, and this proved no exception, with that perfectly British combination of wit, melancholy, and a good dose of stiff upper lip.

MacMillan’s own Sinfonietta (1991) was written just after The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, which is arguably his break-out work, and just before Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (1992) which has proved to be one of his most-performed works (out of some more than 250). It’s a piece that hasn’t been programmed much, and to my knowledge, has only been recorded once (by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under the direction of the composer). That’s a shame, since it’s a piece that exemplifies much of what MacMillan is about, which is the connection and conflict between the spiritual and the physical worlds. The opening slow section featured stellar work on the soprano saxophone by Timothy McAllister (whom OSO concertgoers may remember from his virtuoso work on John Adams’ City Noir), with spot-on intonation and a beautiful, singing tone, even in the uppermost registers that MacMillan gives the performer to contend with. Principal horn Joseph Berger shone in his wickedly difficult calls that essentially went from the highest notes possible to the lowest, one after the other. And the entire percussion and brass sections were rhythmic powerhouses in the crazy march that takes over the middle of the piece.

It was a wonderful concert to play, with a fair amount of variety and interest for us performers, and it gave the chamber orchestra version of the Festival Orchestra a chance to shine without a star soloist or supporting the amazing Berwick Chorus. Coming up: the world premiere of MacMillan’s  A European Requiem (hopefully Brexit free!) and Bach’s Magnificat under the direction of festival artistic director Matthew Halls.

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