{"id":342,"date":"2007-05-26T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2007-05-26T16:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/05\/26\/and-boy-were-our-arms-tired\/"},"modified":"2013-02-07T18:11:12","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T02:11:12","slug":"and-boy-were-our-arms-tired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/05\/26\/and-boy-were-our-arms-tired\/","title":{"rendered":"…and boy were our arms tired!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night we played our last concert in the concert hall until next September. It was a program to thank our many donors who have given of their time and money to help support the symphony. They deserved a hearty thank you from all of us on stage, and I think that our performance gave that to them in spades. The conductor for the evening was Resident Conductor Gregory Vajda<\/a>.<\/p>\n


\n Conductor Gregory Vajda<\/em><\/p>\n

The concert opened with Berlioz’s seldom-heard Overture to Beatrice and Benedict<\/em>. It’s a piece that I’ve never performed before, and not even heard before I downloaded a recording from iTunes the night before our first rehearsal. It’s a delightful piece, full of all the usual Berlioz idiosyncrasies, like off-kilter rhythms, thundering brass, scurrying strings, and soaring melodic lines with quirky rhythmic underpinnings.<\/p>\n

\"jeffrey
\n<\/a>Jeffrey Work, trumpet<\/em>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Next was our new principal trumpet Jeffrey Work, who played a concerto<\/a> written expressly for him by friend, fellow trumpeter, and composer James Stephenson<\/a>. It’s a lovely work, with virtuoso demands on the soloist, which Jeff met with nary a stumble, and gorgeous tone and control evident at all times. It is a piece which places no overt demands on the audience, it sounds great and is easy on the ears, all the while giving new heights of acrobatic daring-do to the trumpet soloist. I polled some colleagues in the orchestra, and they heard echoes of Barber and Walton floating around in the zeitgeist of the piece, which gives you an idea of the harmonic language of the piece.<\/p>\n

\"jean
\n<\/a>Jean Sibelius<\/em>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Last was the venerable war horse, the Second Symphony of Jean Sibelius. We’ve done this piece a lot in the past, including recording it with James DePreist a few years ago. It took a lot of coaxing for Gregory Vajda to get us out of our traditional tempi and copious applications of rallentandi, but it resulted in a less bloated and more lean version of a piece that many of us wouldn’t mind not playing for a while.<\/p>\n

If anything stood out about this concert, aside from our general thankfulness that we have so many generous patrons and volunteers, is was how very tired were all were. The concerts of the previous week took a lot out of all of us, and like a horse who has done a long day’s plowing, we could smell the hay and see the barn in the distance, and we were ready to hang up our instruments for the summer!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night we played our last concert in the concert hall until next September. It was a program to thank our many donors who have given of their time and money to help support the symphony. They deserved a hearty thank you from all of us on stage, and I think that our performance gave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[86,55,62,3656,3660],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-conductor","tag-orchestra","tag-symphony","tag-the-orchestra-world","tag-viola"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-5w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2128,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/13\/vajda-in-fairfax-va\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":0},"title":"vajda in fairfax, va","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Gregory Vajda OSO Resident conductor Gregory Vajda is one of the conductors up for music director of the Fairfax Symphony (located in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C.).\u00c2\u00a0 He wrote a blog entry for the orchestra's blog and gave a very kind shoutout to this blog, so I thought\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "auditions"","block_context":{"text":"auditions","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/auditions\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"gregory_vajda-1","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/gregory_vajda-1-200x203.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":850,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/14\/vajda-a-finalist-in-virginia\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":1},"title":"vajda a finalist in virginia","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"OSO Resident conductor Gregory Vajda photo credit: Aaron Hewitt David Stabler reports that Oregon Symphony Resident Conductor Gregory Vajda is a finalist for the Fairfax (VA) Symphony. Fairfax is a Northern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. I used to play in the Fairfax Symphony back in the day, *cough* years\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "auditions"","block_context":{"text":"auditions","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/auditions\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Gregory Vajda - photo credit: Aaron Hewitt","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/vajda-by-aaron-hewitt.thumbnail.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":927,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/16\/a-great-bench\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":2},"title":"a great bench","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In the sporting world, if you've got depth on your team, then you've got a \"great bench\". Supporting players that can come in at a moment's notice and make a crucial difference when one of your first string players is unable to play. Here at the Oregon Symphony it's been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Gregory Vajda - photo credit: Aaron Hewitt","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/vajda-by-aaron-hewitt.thumbnail.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3555,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/12\/05\/odds-and-ends-4\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":3},"title":"odds and ends","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Oregon Symphony Resident conductor Gregory Vajda conducts a recording of music by his mentor, the composer\/conductor P\u00e9ter E\u00f6tv\u00f6s, entitled As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams.\u00a0 The recording is one of three nominated for the prestigious 2010 MIDEM Classical Award. Conductor Leonard Slatkin has a compelling essay up on his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6315,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/05\/05\/vajda-tapped-for-huntsville-post\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":4},"title":"vajda tapped for huntsville post","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Oregon Symphony Resident Conductor Gregory Vajda (who has announced that the 2011-2012 season will be his last with the OSO) has just been named Music Director of the Hunstville (Alabama) Symphony beginning with the 2011-2012 season. Many congratulations to Gregory on his new post! Huntsville Symphony website Gregory Vajda's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/GV.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1849,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/02\/05\/vajda-in-san-antonio\/","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":5},"title":"vajda in san antonio","author":"Charles Noble","date":"February 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"OSO resident conductor Gregory Vajda is a candidate for the music director position in San Antonio, Texas.\u00c2\u00a0 John Clare, of Texas Public Radio, alerted me to this video interview of Vajda.\u00c2\u00a0 Enjoy! Maestro Gregory Vajda from John Clare on Vimeo. An interview with Gregory Vajda with John Clare at Texas\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}