Tonight was our first Portland performance of the current classical series (we had a run-out concert last night in Newberg).  As usual, OSO president Elaine Calder came out to welcome the audience and to give nods to the major sponsors for the evening’s concert, and to reiterate the announcement of Carlos’ four-year contract extension.

As she began, a heckler in the audience yelled “It’s in the program!!”.  Very loudly.  Very rudely.

I want to take a few moments to address this, as it’s happened once before during this season (as far as I can recollect, during one of the concerts featuring the Adams Chamber Symphony).  

I understand that for some the pre-concert announcements are an irritating routine that must be endured before the concert’s music begins.  I sympathize.  I’d rather just get to the music, too.

However, the major sponsors and/or donors have done a great service to the community by underwriting these concerts, and it’s not too much to expect that, along with appropriate notice in the program, that they are acknowledged from the stage by our chief executive officer.  

Such niceties are greatly appreciated by those who give the money, I’m told, and the fact that they are giving to the symphony makes it possible for you to attend a concert that’s reasonably affordable, instead of nearly 60% more expensive.

I’m glad that the “gentleman” in the audience saw fit to indulge his impatience by bellowing his displeasure - because it created the opportunity to explain why these announcements are made and what purpose they serve.  

I’m sure that Elaine would rather spend more time right before the concert talking to patrons or relaxing in preparation for the concert, but she puts herself front and center for nearly every major concert to acknowledge the generosity of both corporations and individuals, instead of having a recorded announcement by some faceless radio announcer as is done by other orchestras.  

She’s doing her utmost to turn around the financial situation here in Portland, and deserves to be treated with dignity and decorum.

I’ve loved Der Rosenkavalier since I first became acquainted with it during my undergraduate music history courses. What’s not to love? Great melodies, a classic love triangle, and the Vienna Philharmonic!

My favorite moment comes from the mind-blowing trio that concludes the opera (but not the cobble together suite that we’re playing this weekend) - where each of the three main characters express their differing kinds of love for each other, and engage in simultaneous soliloquies about their innermost thoughts and feelings about those forms of love. It’s a tour de force moment in opera composition, and it has few parallels, except perhaps the sextet from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.

So, the trio features as the high point of the entire opera, and the suite which we are playing this weekend at the OSO concerts. Solo strings double the vocal parts (since there are no vocalists in the suite) and there is a suspension that just happens to occur in the second viola solo part (which happens to be played by me) that I (humbly) suggest just might be the most painfully sublime note in the entire suite (except perhaps the high D that principal trumpeter Jeffrey Work is so gorgeously playing at the final climax of the trio) - you be the judge: the note happens right about 51 seconds into this minute-long clip.

Since we don’t have the advantage of voices in the suite version of the opera, I thought it might be fun to give the actual excerpt that you just heard in the form in which it’s heard in the actual opera:

To give credit where credit is due:

The first excerpt is from a performance of the suite by the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of Andre Previn.

The second excerpt is also the Vienna Philharmonic, this time conducted by Herbert von Karajan.  The singers are Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Agnes Baltsa and Janet Perry.