I have heard many student orchestras in my time. The Lynn Philharmonia’s third program this past weekend, which began with Dvořák’s Othello overture and ended with Carl Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony, surpassed all the others with disciplined playing that sounded very professional.
Granted the enthusiasm of youth, with its high energy output, has much to do with what we heard, but this orchestra already has its own distinctive “sound,” one usually reserved for our great city orchestras, into which these excellent student players will eventually find a place.
Kudos must also go to Jon Robertson, dean of the Lynn University Conservatory of Music, who conducted the Dvořák and Nielsen works without a score, leading with the baton technique of a Karajan and the emotive powers of an Ozawa. His stamp of ultimate control brought out the very best from his student players.
Sunday afternoon’s program at the Wold Performing Arts Center opened with the Othello overture. Dvořák wrote 10 operas, some at the start of his career, the rest toward its end. In fact, he died within a week of hearing his last opera, Armida, in 1904. His formative compositional years were in the middle of his life in which he wrote no operas, often visiting England and America to promote his glorious symphonic repertoire. Othello came from this period. Written in 1892, it is a fine tone poem.
A rocky brass section began this overture; they took a while to get it together, but once they did, they improved, and performed consistently throughout. A dark theme in the cellos sets the tone as the story of deception unfolds. Lovely woodwinds lead into a familiar passage — it’s a quote from Wagner’s “magic sleep’’ motif from Die Walküre.
As the pace quickened, there was some wonderful work from the string section, who produced a beautifully sweet tune interfacing with busy triplets from the woodwinds. Next, Dvořák quotes from his own Requiem, suggesting that death awaits Desdemona.
Descending orchestral chords begin to emphasize this as the flutes “go ethereal.” Shimmering strings take over, again sensitively played with remarkably precise bowing. A lone oboe reverie memorializes her death as anxious-sounding music begins, reflecting Othello’s remorse and his sudden self destruction with three distinct chords.
Next came Carl Maria von Weber’s Bassoon Concerto, played by the professor and chair of Lynn Conservatory’s woodwind department, Eric Van der Veer Varner. Clad in black shirt outside his tight shiny black leather trousers, he was the epitome of a “with it” academic whose remarkable talent carries him forward with the ease of a thoroughbred racehorse.
The Bassoon Concerto dates from 1811. Weber’s Clarinet Concerto had won much praise from the Munich musicians who played it, and where he was then living. At their request, he plunged into the vast void of the solo bassoon repertoire, monopolized until then by Mozart’s 1774 concerto.
A slow, steady drumbeat is broken by the solo bassoon with a sharply dotted martial tune and difficult runs that are repeated by the orchestra as it develops the theme. The bassoon’s next tune is passed on to the flutes who answer it cheekily. A light string accompaniment — the orchestra now reduced to 30 players — sits under Varner, who did fine work up and down the scales, reaching down to some impossible low notes with consummate ease. The lyrical melody from the bassoon that came next showed how well Varner cleanly skips octaves.
A martial trumpet sound opens the next movement. Varner’s playing here was tender and sweet as he gave equal value to high and low notes, leading to a surprisingly lovely duet between him and the horns. Continuing in lyrical mode, Varner performed a long-held note leading to a most delightful crescendo. The effect was spine-chilling. A lively tune on the bassoon takes off in the last movement with cleverly played scales, more octave jumping and incredible breath control soloist Varner. He is a master at this; his breathing was imperceptible, invisible to the human eye or ear.
Witty and bubbling over with glee, this lovely work draws to a close with the soloist showing off his talent as the composer intended, in theatrical fashion, which Sunday was followed with shouts of “bravo,” warm applause and a presentation bouquet of flowers.
The concert closed with the Nielsen Fourth, which the composer subtitled “The Inextinguishable.” Perhaps a strange title, but given that World War I was raging around him in Denmark, understandable, since he wrote it in 1916, two years into the war. Careful not to mention the long-embedded trench warfare and the Kaiser’s army of occupation, he wrote friends saying the symphony had a specific idea. Sidestepping any mention of war, he called it his musical quest for “light, life and motion” and “the will and craving for life,” which, to my mind is as near to referencing the war as he safely could without drawing attention of the occupiers.
The Symphony No. 4 is a massive 45-minute work. Dense in its orchestration with two sets of timpani — four kettledrums on each side of the stage — surely denoting the distant sounds of cannon fire as used here. The student orchestra of 85 players met the challenge head-on.
The first movement erupts with contrasting harmonies in the strings and woodwinds as the two sets of drums — played by Isaac Fernandez Hernandez and Juanmanuel Lopez — punctuate the music with tritone intervals. The calm lyricism of the clarinets follows in stark contrast, but this melancholy theme is broken by screaming violins, surely an oblique reference to the carnage of war as are the dirge-like dissonances throughout the symphony, commemorating the dead.
Played as one unbroken movement, Nielsen’s Fourth is probably a precursor to the Shostakovich Seventh Symphony (Leningrad) of 1941, which the Russian composer, wrote in the second year of World War II. It has all the unsettled themes and density of the Nielsen work. I would bet Shostakovich heard it.
The student orchestra gave it their all and played with an intensity and understanding that was met by a standing ovation from a full house. Kudos to them in spades.