This is a bit on the late side, I know, but I promised that I’d give myself a small breather after the last set of classical series concerts before I wrote about them.<\/p>\n
First, Olivier Messiaen’s L’Ascension<\/em> for orchestra. It’s not a work that I was familiar with before the rehearsals began, and it was a bit of an odd pill to swallow. Not unrewarding, not un-beautiful, just different, I guess. It’s enigmatic when you want (or expect) it to proclaim. Part of it is the way it is structured from the point of view of a performer.<\/p>\n The first movement, Majesty of Christ Asking Glory from his Father<\/em>, is basically a slow, long, series of trumpet calls, with a few winds sprinkled in amongst the massive brass orchestrations. So we in the string sections start the piece by sitting around listening to really slow music for close to 10 minutes. If you’re the least bit tired, as I was on Saturday night, it can be excruciating sitting still in front of 2000+ people and struggling not to fall asleep on stage!<\/p>\n The two middle movements, Serene Alleluias of a Soul Desiring Heaven<\/em> and Alleluia on the Trumpet, Alleluia on the Cymbal<\/em>, are quite active, the first one being mostly centered upon the quasi-birdcalls of the woodwinds, the second involving the entire orchestra in a lively dance that is quite fun to play. I couldn’t help but think of Jesus Christ Superstar<\/em> at the closing cadence – it is so Hollywood, but entirely appropriate for the most theatrical of the work’s four movements.<\/p>\n Then comes the final movement, the excruciatingly slow Christ’s Prayer Rising to his Father<\/em>, which is murder to play after the preceding three movements, and it ends very loudly, but without a sense of resolution, which made the audience response a bit muted, and the performance a bit less gratifying. I suppose with more exposure to the piece I could warm to it, but it remains at arm’s length for me at this point.<\/p>\n Then came Carmina Burana<\/em>. It does what it sets out to do, and it does it exceedingly well, but I don’t think that anyone will leave any performance of this work with their life altered in any meaningful way. But it’s proof that music does not have to have depth to have impact, or to be regarded as a masterpiece, or to have a lasting following.<\/p>\n I think of Carmina<\/em> as the Sarah Brightman of the classical music canon, with followers flocking to every performance, knowing the words to all of the songs, and going crazy when it’s all sung and done. If I sound a bit condescending when I talk about this piece, it’s because I am, to be totally honest. But if programming it makes audiences happy, and fills the house (as it did, on both counts) then I’m happy to play it, and with a smile on my face besides.<\/p>\n Plus, having the three excellent soloists we had, and the on fire Portland Symphonic Choir and Pacific Youth Choir up in the choir loft made for an exciting and enjoyable performing experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a bit on the late side, I know, but I promised that I’d give myself a small breather after the last set of classical series concerts before I wrote about them. First, Olivier Messiaen’s L’Ascension for orchestra. It’s not a work that I was familiar with before the rehearsals began, and it was […]<\/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_feature_clip_id":0,"_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":[148,115,2],"tags":[3668],"class_list":["post-983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appreciations","category-music","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-oregon-symphony"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-fR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":475,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/10\/11\/oso-classical-series-b-concert-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":983,"position":0},"title":"OSO Classical Series B – Concert 1","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This got buried amidst all of the intervening news of last week, and I thought that those of you who are coming to the concerts this weekend might be interested in doing some advance listening in preparation for the concert experience. So pardon the duplication of posts. This year I've\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\/spacer1.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":530,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/12\/classical-6-imix\/","url_meta":{"origin":983,"position":1},"title":"Classical 6 iMix","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the iMix for this coming week's classical series concerts with conductor Hannu Lintu and cellist Ralph Kirshbaum. The recommended Sibelius recording is from a set recorded in the 60's by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. I'd' long heard that it was a landmark recording of the complete\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/spacer1.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":453,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/10\/03\/new-feature-oso-imixes\/","url_meta":{"origin":983,"position":2},"title":"new feature – OSO iMixes","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This year I've decided to add a new feature to the blog for Oregon Symphony concertgoers: the iMix. An iMix is a published playlist of songs from iTunes gathered into a central location. For each Classical series concert, I'll be publishing a iMix of the works on the program, all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "iMix"","block_context":{"text":"iMix","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/imix\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/spacer.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":179,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/01\/25\/the-future\/","url_meta":{"origin":983,"position":3},"title":"the future","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Lately I've been picking through old clippings of mine as well as albums of photographs and the like. It is an interesting time, to be on the cusp of 40 as a classical musician. You are neither the new young hotshot nor the seasoned veteran. You have neither the allure\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"classical\"","block_context":{"text":"classical","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/tag\/classical\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":329,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/05\/21\/an-orchestras-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":983,"position":4},"title":"an orchestra’s life","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Tonight is the last concert of our 2006-2007 classical subscription series (we've got two more after this: the Evelyn Nagel donor concert and a runout to George Fox University in Newberg). It's a fitting culmination to this season in several ways. First, we play Schubert's \"Unfinished\" Symphony. This is a\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":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":282,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/04\/19\/oso-ticket-sale-act-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":983,"position":5},"title":"OSO ticket sale – act now!","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I was just alerted to this new offer from the Oregon Symphony's marketing department - I think it's a great way to get more butts in seats: If you join the OSO's Symphony in E-mail program, you can get specially priced tickets beginning Thursday, April 19th (one day before the\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":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983","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=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}