"Overture to Candide" was a rousing start to the evening. From the choir loft seats it's great fun to watch the conductor. I'd never seen the string players have to pull stray hairs off their bows before, but there were a few who did after this piece. There was also a guest concertmaster, Jonathan Carney. He's the regular concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony. An interesting note, the BSO's Pops season opened Oct. 7, and why anyone would want to miss Maestro Everly and Gotta Dance is beyond me, but then I'm not a trained musician, mearly a fun loving amateur. Mr. Carney's style seemed a little flamboyent to me, at least more than I usually recall seeing from the other TSO associate and assistant concertmasters.
Next up was "Symphony #1" by Barber. Maestro Oundjian introduced this piece (I do love how there's talking in casual concerts!) and mentioned it's rarely performed because people don't quite know how to program it. After hearing it, I've decided I'm not a fan. It's interesting I suppose, but it didn't really resonate with me. The evening's concert was dedicated to a cousin of the Oundjian family, making the very famous Barber piece, "Adagio for Strings" especially poignant. No one could ever accuse Mr. Oundjian of being stoic on the podium, he feels what he's conducting, and while I often have trouble finding a downbeat, the orchestra produces beautiful music with his leading. At one point he made a gesture that looked as if he was drawing a bow across a violin. It's not hard to tell that is his instrument. There's one very pregnant pause in the piece and the audience was told that in a previous concert some people had thought the piece was over and started clapping, however he felt sure that wouldn't happen tonight. And indeed, with that reminder, it didn't.
The program concluded with the much more upbeat "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin. This piece was named by Ira and originally was going to be "American Rhapsody", however with other names around like "Study in Gray", it became "Rhapsody in Blue". Gershwin was asked to compose the piece by Paul Whiteman for a concert called An Experiment in Modern Music in 1924. He hadn't been working on it and with 5 weeks left, on a trip to Boston for out of town tryouts for a musical, he developed the piece. Gershwin wrote a piece for 2 pianos. The second piano part became the orchestration. Apparently Gershwin was mostly self taught and asked Ravel and Stravinsky if he could study music with them. Ravel's response was "why would you want to be a B class Ravel when you can be an A Class Gershwin?". Stravinsky asked how much money he made, and when Gershwin laid out a 6 digit figure, Stravinsky said "I should be studying with you".
Now back to the actual performance of the piece. Peter Oundjian introduced Jon Kimura Parker and explained they attended Julliard at the same time, but only met at their graduation ceremony (their guest speaker was Aaron Copland and neither were really paying attention) since they were seated beside each other. Not a lot of names come between "Ou" and "Pa" so the alphabet brought them together. They joked around a bit, mentioned the glissando in the clarinet at the start of the piece and how when the clarinetist slid it for the first time (it wasn't originally written that way) it was liked and since then the clarinet player pretty much does what he likes that sounds good. At this the oboe player looked like he was laughing and the clarinetist gave a quick shake of his head. However, it sounded really cool, and is something I'm going to have to read about how to do, this may make runs a lot easier ;)
There was an instant standing ovation at the conclusion of the piece. For an encore Mr. Parker took the microphone and said "when you play with an orchestra you've got to have...", sat down and started playing "I've Got Rhythm". After being presented with flowers, and there still being a standing ovation, he went back in time, but stayed in the same country, concluding the evening with "Solace" by Scott Joplin.
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