{"id":4202,"date":"2010-03-15T00:31:41","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T07:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/?p=4202"},"modified":"2010-03-15T08:18:37","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T15:18:37","slug":"a-tale-of-two-pieces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/15\/a-tale-of-two-pieces\/","title":{"rendered":"a tale of two pieces"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Sunday the Oregon Symphony performed a concert consisting of three pieces which it had never before in its history performed. (My apologies for that seemingly Google-translated-to-English-from-German sentence).\u00a0 The Delius Irmelin Prelude<\/em> was pleasant fare, and having a couple nice section viola melodic moments (and one big, exposed viola solo at the end, nicely played by Jo\u00ebl Belgique) made it ok for me, but overall, Delius has a long way to go to make it to my top 50 composers list.\u00a0 So, the entirety of the concert was largely made up of two very different pieces, each a challenge to perform, but both quite rewarding in their own way.<\/p>\n

The Sixth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams rounded out the first half of the concert.\u00a0 It’s a beast of a piece.\u00a0 Perhaps slightly less bleak than the Fourth, but not by much.\u00a0 It also presents the performer with the problem of the fact that it starts you right out of the gate at 100 miles an hour.\u00a0 No slow introduction to allow the sea legs to set in, the adrenalin to subside, and the wits to be gathered about one’s self.\u00a0 Just right into the fire straight out of the frying pan.\u00a0 Like Mahler’s symphonies, it’s written for the full capacity of a modern, virtuoso, symphony orchestra.\u00a0 No matter what part you’re playing, you’re always doing something that matters, like with Mozart, for example, but unlike Mozart’s symphonies, the VW6 is usually demanding that you listen to 10 other lines at once while doing so, and either in a range or at a pace that is nearer the edge of your capabilities as a player, too.<\/p>\n

We played the same program Saturday evening out at Bauman Auditorium at George Fox University in Newberg, which is a smaller hall with more reverberant acoustics.\u00a0 The best thing about Bauman is that it’s much easier to hear across the stage, and also the collective sound of the orchestra comes back to the stage from the hall – giving a psychologically important sense of the ensemble sound – especially in very soft passages for the whole string section.\u00a0 It was something of a revelation to me.\u00a0 I never get to go out into the hall to hear the orchestra as an observer, so even getting to really hear the string sound and full ensemble sound in a more lively room provided a lot of good information.\u00a0 Mainly, I was gratified to hear a real “big orchestra” sheen to the string section’s sound.\u00a0 In the Schnitz, the highest frequencies are a bit harsh, so you lose some of the soft sheen that really makes a orchestra’s string section sound supple and effortless.\u00a0 In Newberg the sheen was in full evidence right from the first entrance of the Delius, and the gorgeous Andante theme from the first movement of the VW was wonderful (at least to these ears).\u00a0 Why am I going on about this? Well, it’s one thing to hear from patrons and the music director and other interested observers that the level of the orchestra’s playing has gone up, up, up, but until one has the chance to really hear that for one’s self, there is no real sense of the nature of the accomplishment.\u00a0 So the Newberg performance really opened my eyes to the very real, virtuoso instrument that the Oregon Symphony has become over the last six years or so.<\/p>\n

The sole work on the second half of the concert was Richard Strauss’ Bourgeois Gentilhomme Suite<\/em>, with an added narration performed by the actor David Ogden Stiers (who is associate conductor of the Newport Symphony and has a home on the central Oregon coast).\u00a0 I’ve yet to encounter a work of Richard Strauss that I have not thoroughly enjoyed playing.\u00a0 His writing for strings really represents the pinnacle of the late-Romantic ethos, and is as melodically and harmonically satisfying as it is technically difficult.\u00a0 Gentilhomme<\/em> is a piece in a much lighter vein (both in terms of subject matter and in the purely technical area of orchestration) than this popular tone poems or operas.\u00a0 There are only 16 strings on stage, many of which have independent solo lines at different points in the proceedings.\u00a0 There are many more winds, brass, and percussion on stage than strings, but Strauss so cunningly orchestrates the work that ensemble balance is rarely an issue.<\/p>\n

Playing this piece is such a delight.\u00a0 Not only as a performer with one’s own part to play, but in hearing some of the amazing things that one’s colleagues get to play, too.\u00a0 Jun Iwasaki, our concertmaster, playing the hugely virtuosic solo in the Dance of the Tailors<\/em> movement, or the Fencing Master<\/em> featuring principal trumpet Jeffrey Work and pianist Carol Rich; or Nancy Ives, our principal cellist, playing the heart-rending love song in the concluding Dinner<\/em> movement.\u00a0 There are too many great things going on to list them all.\u00a0 And to top it all off, there was this amazing narration that was interspersed between the various movements of the suite, giving the basic elements of Molier\u00e9’s diabolically funny and witty plot, all in the guises of the main characters – each brought to life through the virtuoso acting chops by David Ogden Stiers.\u00a0 It’s a shame we couldn’t get another chance to play it again at least one more time.\u00a0 I was sad to see the piece go…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Sunday the Oregon Symphony performed a concert consisting of three pieces which it had never before in its history performed. (My apologies for that seemingly Google-translated-to-English-from-German sentence).\u00a0 The Delius Irmelin Prelude was pleasant fare, and having a couple nice section viola melodic moments (and one big, exposed viola solo at the end, nicely played […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[148,135,2],"tags":[2172,2173,3668,1268],"class_list":["post-4202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appreciations","category-soloists-recitals","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-bourgeois-gentilhomme","tag-david-ogden-stiers","tag-oregon-symphony","tag-richard-strauss"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-15M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13228,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2014\/02\/18\/pyp-presents-adventurous-enviable-program-on-saturday\/","url_meta":{"origin":4202,"position":0},"title":"pyp presents adventurous, enviable program on saturday","author":"Charles Noble","date":"February 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Being a member of the Oregon Symphony, while being, essentially, a job, is often a joy as well. I get to play some of the greatest music ever written with my amazing colleagues. We have a wonderfully musical music director, and a hard working staff, without whom we would not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "concert preview"","block_context":{"text":"concert preview","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/concert-preview\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"IMG_4589","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7322\/12608838184_0249f8aa9b_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7322\/12608838184_0249f8aa9b_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7322\/12608838184_0249f8aa9b_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7021,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/10\/28\/ludwig-carl-and-aaron\/","url_meta":{"origin":4202,"position":1},"title":"ludwig, carl, and aaron","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This week's concerts by the Oregon Symphony feature three works that range from the well-known to the virtually unknown. It's a good mix of the familiar and the new (though none of the pieces was written more recently than 67 years ago). Beethoven's only violin concerto is one of those\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "programming"","block_context":{"text":"programming","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/programming-music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/KG_016a1-599x299.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/KG_016a1-599x299.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/KG_016a1-599x299.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":18088,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2020\/03\/30\/artslandia-happy-hour-to-benefit-oregon-symphony\/","url_meta":{"origin":4202,"position":2},"title":"artslandia happy hour to benefit oregon symphony","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 30, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"On Wednesday, April 1st at 5:00PM PDT I'll be playing a set of solo pieces for viola on artslandia's happy hour Facebook Live series. Instead of having a virtual tip jar for myself, a link to the Oregon Symphony's donation page will be set up instead. I hope you can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "fundraising"","block_context":{"text":"fundraising","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/fundraising\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/happy-hour.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/happy-hour.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/happy-hour.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/happy-hour.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/happy-hour.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/happy-hour.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":459,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/10\/04\/web-ticket-offer-from-oregon-symphony\/","url_meta":{"origin":4202,"position":3},"title":"web ticket offer from Oregon Symphony","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This will be a great concert, and for $10 - c'mon, it's a steal! $10 Friends and Family offer Spanish Splendor with the Oregon Symphony October 13-15 Carlos Kalmar, conductor Patricia Risley, mezzo-soprano Join us for an evening filled with mystery and surprise\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 love, passion and seduction. Featuring the cheerful,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/oslogo.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2744,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/06\/22\/oregon-symphony-in-the-news\/","url_meta":{"origin":4202,"position":4},"title":"oregon symphony in the news","author":"Charles Noble","date":"June 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"There have been several articles in the local press about the current Oregon Symphony financial situation: High\/low times for the Oregon Symphony [David Stabler\/Oregonian] The Oregon Symphony cuts back [David Stabler\/Oregonian\/video] Arts groups in a fiscal thicket [Bob Hicks\/ArtScatter.com] Since we're about to enter into negotiations between musicians and management,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "fundraising"","block_context":{"text":"fundraising","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/fundraising\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"noble_sig.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/noble_sig.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7384,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2012\/03\/09\/saturday-is-viola-night\/","url_meta":{"origin":4202,"position":5},"title":"saturday is viola night","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a duel between two violists this saturday night: teacher vs. student in a cross park blocks skirmish. At Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall is the student: violist Lauren Siess plays the great Viola Concerto of William Walton with the Portland Youth Philharmonic under music director David Hattner. Across the park\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "soloists & recitals"","block_context":{"text":"soloists & recitals","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/soloists-recitals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202","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=4202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}