{"id":827,"date":"2008-03-06T18:55:22","date_gmt":"2008-03-07T02:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/06\/first-meetings\/"},"modified":"2008-03-07T00:12:50","modified_gmt":"2008-03-07T08:12:50","slug":"first-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/06\/first-meetings\/","title":{"rendered":"first meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today we had the first rehearsals for our upcoming classical series concerts with Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen<\/a>. He’s a guest conductor that we’ve never worked with before, and he’s very new to the U.S. conducting circuit – this is his second US orchestra ever, his first having been the Cincinnati Symphony in February.<\/p>\n

\"pietari-inkinen-sm.jpg\"<\/a>
\nPietari Inkinen, conductor (photo: Tanja Ahola)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

The first meeting of a new conductor and an orchestra is always an interesting experience. There are many, many variables involved in these encounters. These include: the physical appearance of the conductor, the reputation (or lack thereof) of the conductor, the orchestra’s relationship with their own music director, the repertoire being performed, how tired the orchestra is, the quality of the other guest conductors, etc.<\/p>\n

The Sibelius En Saga<\/em> which opens the program is a long tone poem which is not well known to the orchestra at all. It is a fairly rambling piece which needs a firm hand to keep the pacing so that the climaxes are prepared properly. I’m not sure it’s the best piece to showcase a young, Finnish conductor with – there are plenty of more well-known pieces that might showcase both he and the orchestra better, including works by living Finnish composers, such as Rautavaara, Saariaho, Lindberg, and Salonen. It’s an enjoyable enough piece, with some striking orchestral colors, but the jury is out on this piece so far.<\/p>\n

The Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony is a piece which we’ve seen a lot of over the years. Most string players groan when they see it listed on a program, as it’s very tiring – long stretches of loud dynamics, very little time to rest, lots of loud, fast passages. Plus the brass are very loud, so the ear gets fatigued as well. What I most would like out of an interpretation of this piece is for someone to put their unique stamp on it, make it their own, and get us out of the last 10 performances’ rut that we’ll go to if we don’t see something compelling. It’s a piece that you could give to a troop of untrained monkeys to perform and it would get a great audience response.<\/p>\n

The Stravinsky Violin Concerto is also relatively unfamiliar to most of us (having not been performed here since before 1990), and it’s a tricky piece to put together, with a lot of concertante elements in the woodwinds and brass that must mesh seamlessly together with the soloist. Today we ran through it with the soloist (another Finn – Pekka Kuusisto<\/a>) right after he jumped off the plane from Finland (dressed in garb that made him look as if he’d just climbed Mt Hood circa 1920), so I’m not going to say anything about it – tomorrow will tell…<\/p>\n

\"pekka_kuusisto_3_sm.jpg\"<\/a>
\nPekka Kuusisto, violinist (photo: Tanja Ahola)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Inkinen seems to be well-mannered, speaks very good English, and is polite. He does have a bit of that same sort of vagueness with his gestures that is in common with Hannu Lintu, but it remains to be seen if his largely hands off approach will reap dividends in performance. I remember not being super impressed with Lintu at his first couple rehearsals, these Finnish conductors do a slow burn sort of thing, where you’re not all that hot on them, and then the sneak up on you and you’re blown away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today we had the first rehearsals for our upcoming classical series concerts with Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen. He’s a guest conductor that we’ve never worked with before, and he’s very new to the U.S. conducting circuit – this is his second US orchestra ever, his first having been the Cincinnati Symphony in February.<\/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":[299,115,2],"tags":[86,55],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conducting","category-music","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-conductor","tag-orchestra"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-dl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":821,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/03\/better-living-through-chemistry\/","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":0},"title":"better living through chemistry","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"NSO bassist Jeff Weisner (with whom I was at Peabody Conservatory back in the day) has written an excellent blog post at Double Bass Blog concerning the delicate balance of chemistry that can make or break the relationship between orchestra and conductor. Since the National Symphony is, ahem, conducting a\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":[]},{"id":879,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/25\/another-new-face\/","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":1},"title":"another new face","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"We here at the OSO seem to the welcoming committee for conductors who are making their first forays into the North American market this year.\u00c2\u00a0 Earlier this month we welcomed Pietari Inkinen of Finland, who was in his second week of being in America (after a week in Cincinnati). This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Juanjo Mena, conductor","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/jjmena.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":837,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/09\/finlandia\/","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":2},"title":"finlandia","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"midnight sun - kevo, finland photo by josef stuefer\u00c2\u00a0 It's the morning (afternoon, really, but daylight saving time be damned!) after our first classical series concert with our two Finnish guest artists, conductor Pietari Inkinen and violinist Pekka Kuusisto.\u00c2\u00a0 In a previous post, I wrote about the often mysterious process\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"midnight sun, kevo, finland","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/14973471_67650761b2_b.thumbnail.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3129,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/09\/18\/young-conductors-to-watch\/","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":3},"title":"young conductors to watch","author":"Charles Noble","date":"September 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Alondra de la Parra - Photo: Courtney Perry The Daily Beast has an article about the current crop of young conductors who are either making it big or, in their opinion, are about to (the headline screams: Young Rock Stars of the Conducting World\").\u00a0 Some of these conductors have been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"AlondradelaParra1web","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/AlondradelaParra1web.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":842,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/11\/no-snappy-title-today\/","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":4},"title":"no snappy title today","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm just too wiped out to think of a snappy title this morning. We finished our classical series last night to very good audience response - several hundred of you took advantage of the ticket stub offer to repeat the concert experience (and some of whom were lucky friends who\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":[]},{"id":3998,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/02\/06\/karen-gomyo-plays-prokofiev\/","url_meta":{"origin":827,"position":5},"title":"karen gomyo plays prokofiev","author":"Charles Noble","date":"February 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This weekend's set of Classical series concerts at the Oregon Symphony feature the Canadian violinist Karen Gomyo, who I had a chance to hear several times when she was still just on the cusp of a career, most recently when she came to play the Bruch G minor Violin Concerto\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\/827","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=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}