Associated Musings

As you’ve probably heard by now, my time as Associate Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra is quickly drawing to a close – I’ll be conducting the last concerts of my tenure this weekend at Marsh Symphony on the Prairie, before I head to Boston to take up a new position. 

As I reflect on my two years here in Indy, I’m struck by how fortunate I’ve been to have had an incredible diversity of opportunities with the ISO, conducting on every concert series, from the classical subscription series to the Family series, from Symphony on the Prairie to the Discovery concerts for students.  By my count, it all adds up to 76 performances of 32 different programs during my time here!

Among these 76 collaborations with the Indianapolis Symphony, there are a number that I know I will look back on especially fondly in the years to come.  Some of these personal musical highlights:  my first concerts at the Prairie back in 2008, which included Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7; the performances of the Corigliano Piano Concerto and Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto as part of the American Pianists Association competition in 2009; and the recent performances of Strauss’ Don Juan as part of the classical season finale that I conducted just last month.  There were also highlights of other sorts – playing the national anthem for over 67,000 people at Lucas Oil Stadium before the Colts-Patriots game last season, and 2 shows with a Beatles cover band last summer at the Prairie, which drew the most excited, fun, and hippest crowd I’ve ever performed for.  As for lowlights – well, only one really comes to mind:  the Happy Hour concert that I was slated to conduct just before the start of my official tenure in 2008, which was canceled because of a power outage – bummer!

I want to thank you, the wonderful loyal audiences of the ISO, for the warm welcome you’ve given me from the beginning of my time here – I look forward to hopefully returning in future years to make music for you again.  To the staff of the ISO, thank you for your professionalism, creativity, and sense of humor through thick and thin.  And above all, a tremendous thank you to the musicians of the ISO – it has truly been a pleasure to collaborate with you over the past two years.  Thank you for your artistry, thank you for your flexibility, and thank you for your patience with me as I have learned and grown as a conductor.

It occurs to me that my career seems to be following an eastward progression – my first job after grad school was in Los Angeles, then I came to Indy, and next I’m headed to Boston.  If this trend continues, it may be a while before I work my way all around the world to get back in the vicinity of Indy :-)  In any case, I will always treasure the great memories from my time here, and the friendships I’ve made – and hopefully I’ll get the chance to come back and visit and make music again soon!

See you at the Prairie this weekend!

P.S. – During the coming years, if you’d like to stay in touch with what I’m up to, check out my website:  www.seannewhouse.com.

I’m thrilled to this week have the privilege of making my debut on the ISO’s classical subscription series, as I approach the end of my tenure here in Indy.  Most of the concerts I’ve conducted over my two seasons here have been on one rehearsal, and the musicians of the ISO are such pros that they can put together a good show on that kind of short schedule.  But without being too presumptuous, what I think the ISO players and I both live for is the chance to really delve into the details of the music, and refine the performance to the highest level possible – which is what we get the chance to do in a week like this one, where we have a full set of five rehearsals - and thus why I'm particular excited about this weekend's concerts!

This week’s program is both fulfilling and challenging in its variety, with a more recent composition by a living composer, Ke-Chia Chen, a host of different works for solo violin and orchestra, and Strauss’ Don Juan.  It occurs to me that while these works span over 150 years of musical history, they do have a common thread – all these pieces present different perspectives on romanticism.  Take Ke-Chia Chen’s piece, Broken Crystal, for example, written just a few years ago – it deals quite literally with a romantic subject, in that the crystal of the title is a metaphor for the human heart.  You can hear these intimate feelings evoked in the passionate, sweeping melodies, as well as in the raw heartache expressed in the final section.

One other subject that this kind of varied program has focused me on is the conductor’s role as the unifier of diverse creative forces, one of the great rewards and challenges of the art.  For example, with a very new piece by a very young composer, like we have in Broken Crystal, my job is to try to internalize the musical language and musical logic of the piece *without* the benefit of a large canon of other works by the same composer to give me context, or even long familiarity with the work itself – and then to communicate that to the orchestral players, who are also new to this music, in such a way that together we can make the composer’s vision real for the audience.  With works for soloist and orchestra, like we have with our two fantastic violinists this week, Bella Hristova and Augustin Hadelich, my ideal is to understand their interpretation so intimately that I’m on a virtually telepathic wavelength with them during the performance, constantly adjusting in the moment to their musical impulses and framing them in the best possible light.  And with a warhorse of the repertoire like Strauss’ Don Juan, I’m attempting to serve the composer’s vision of the piece while simultaneously giving it my personal stamp and honoring the fantastic musicianship and solo contributions of the ISO players.

Time flies when you’re having fun, and so we’ve come to the last Symphonic Hits series performances of the ISO season – which also means our last Sound Off preconcert events of the season (hosted by yours truly, as usual).  Friday and Saturday’s performances are led by guest conductor Jun Märkl, and feature Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 along with two virtuosic works for piano and orchestra:  Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and Saint-Säens’ Africa, with piano soloist Marc-André Hamelin.  I’ll be hosting Sound Off one hour before each concert - I hope you can join us!

One of the things I’ll be talking about at Sound Off this week is the connection between Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 and a motet for mixed choir that he wrote during the same period:  Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen?  (Why is the light given to those who suffer?)  Brahms wrote a letter that indicates that the feelings expressed in the motet are similar to the darker shadows that appear in the otherwise largely sunny mood of his Symphony No. 2.  Here’s a nice performance of the motet by the Prelude Choir Budapest:

Here’s the beginning of a fine performance of the symphony by Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic (this particular clip contains the first part of the first movement).

Here are the two works on the first half of the program.  First, Yefim Bronfman playing the Liszt 2nd Concerto, with Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra.  The special bonus on this one is the chance to see Gergiev conducting with a toothpick for a baton (literally!).  And don't ask me why he does that - it's a mystery to me too :-)



And finally, here’s Africa, by Camille Saint-Säens – a piece so infrequently played these days that I couldn’t even find a professional-level performance video on YouTube.  But here’s a fine performance with audio only (performers unknown, unfortunately):



See you at the Symphony!

Greetings all!  Sound Off, the preconcert event that I host, returns to its usual time (6:30PM) for this Friday and Saturday night’s concerts in the ISO’s Symphonic Hits series.  This week’s program presents a wonderful variety of music led by guest conductor Krzysztof Urbanski:  Lutoslawski’s Little Suite, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, featuring pianist Dejan Lazic, and Dvorak’s beloved Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.”

As usual, at Sound Off this week, we’ll talk some about the music on the program, take your questions, and chat with a couple of ISO musicians, going “backstage” to find about life as a performer.  We invite you to also submit in advance your burning questions about orchestral music and the ISO, for the segment I call "The Audience Wants to Know."  You can submit them by commenting on this blog or our Facebook page.

The Dvorak and Mozart are staples of the orchestral repertoire, but I’m particularly excited for Indianapolis audiences to discover the first work on the program, Lutoslawski’s Little Suite, which the ISO has never performed before.  (And I will confess that I’m also excited to discover it myself, as I’ve never heard it live either!)  This is a work that, despite having been written under some artistically restrictive and repressive conditions (I’ll talk a bit about this at Sound Off), displays remarkable ingenuity and charm, molding actual folk melodies into a very convincing 10-minute suite.  There are no recordings of it on YouTube, so I thought I would pique your interest with another work that seems to me in a similar folk-inspired spirit (although this one does not quote any actual folk tunes):  Bartok’s Dance Suite.



Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 is one of the brightest jewels in his consistently brilliant set of such works.  Here is a very fine performance by Zoltan Kocsis, with Jirí Behlohlávek and the Virtuosi di Praga.



For Dvorak’s legendary Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” I turned up several interesting things on YouTube.  First is a wonderfully creative transcription for solo guitar by the guitarist Jorge Caballero, also performing here:



The Chicago Symphony does a concert series called Beyond the Score, where they break down major works in detail, examining them both in historical context and musical content.  They’ve made available on YouTube the complete video of their Beyond the Score program on Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9.  Here is Part I, and the remainder is also easily found on YouTube.



Finally, here is a fantastic performance by Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic of the last movement of the symphony.  (This is only the first part, but the remainder is also available on YouTube).



See you at the Symphony!

This coming Friday and Saturday, I’ll be hosting our preconcert event Sound Off at a special time – 6:00pm.  This is because the Honor Orchestra of America will be performing at 7:00pm, before the ISO hits the stage at 8:00pm, for this week’s performances in the Symphonic Hits series.  We invite you to make a full evening of it at the Hilbert Circle Theater with Sound Off and the two performances!

The ISO performance will feature wonderful staples of the repertoire, with guest conductor James Gaffigan leading a program that opens with Rossini’s Semiramide Overture and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2, and then features Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and soloist Stephen Hough on the second half.

As usual, for Sound Off, we’d love for you to send us questions in advance (about orchestral music in general, or the ISO in particular) that we may feature in our segment “The Audience Wants to Know.”  You can submit your questions by commenting on this blog post, posting on the ISO Facebook page, or emailing it to soundoff@indianapolissymphony.org. 

To give you a little taste of what’s in store on this week’s concerts, I’ve collected some YouTube videos of the repertoire – some “standard,” and others not so much :-)

We’ll start with a normal performance – this is Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic with Rossini’s Semiramide Overture.



And now, a much more unusual arrangement – for 16 pianists on 8 pianos!



Here’s a classic performance from 1962 of the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto, with soloist Van Cliburn and conductor Kirill Kondrashin, in Moscow.  This is the beginning of the first movement - the rest of the concerto is easily available on YouTube as well.



And then, I couldn’t resist including musical comedian Victor Borge’s riff on the opening of the concerto:



Finally, here are a couple of videos related to Beethoven’s 2nd Symphony.  First, an introduction to the work, created by Jan Swafford for the Boston Symphony.



And here’s a fine performance of the Beethoven with Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony.



See you at the Symphony!

Happy New Year, everyone – I hope 2010 is off to a terrific start for all of you!

 

This coming Friday and Saturday, the 8^th and 9^th, the ISO’s series of popular classics, Symphonic Hits powered by Lilly, returns to the Hilbert Circle Theater stage, and of course, that also means the return of Sound Off, the preconcert event that I host one hour prior to each concert (AKA 6:30pm).

 

This week’s concert program is full of spectacular music, including a suite of excerpts from my favorite work by Sergei Prokofiev, his ballet music for Romeo and Juliet.  The excerpts for this suite were chosen by this week’s conductor, Andrew Litton, and I believe that these will be the first-ever performances of this particular combination of movements.  The concert also features Tchaikovsky’s warhorse Violin Concerto, with soloist Vadim Gluzman, and Tchaikovsky’s Coronation March.

 

The first couple editions of Sound Off have been a lot of fun, thanks in large part to your terrific participation and questions for me and my guests.  If you have a burning question about orchestras or symphonic music that you’d like to see me answer during our The Audience Wants to Know segment, please submit it by commenting on this blog post, posting it on the ISO Facebook page, or emailing it to soundoff@indianapolissymphony.org.   In the next few days, I think the ISO staff may be even posting a special free concert ticket offer on our Facebook page for the best question submitted, so be sure to check for that.

 

Here are some videos to kindle your interest in this week’s repertoire.  I couldn’t resist starting with what is probably the most novel performance of music from the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto that I’ve ever heard.  This is a young accordion virtuoso from Ukraine, Alexander Hrustevich, performing the 3^rd movement of the concerto, and playing both the solo part and accompaniment himself - it’s quite breathtaking:
 

 

And to balance that, here’s a classic “normal” performance of the first movement with the legendary David Oistrakh as soloist.  (This is only the first part of the movement, but the remainder of the movement, as well as the rest of the concerto, are easily accessible on YouTube).
 

 

Here is a performance by the famous Bolshoi Ballet of the scene ‘Romeo at Juliet’s Tomb’ from Romeo and Juliet.  This scene will not be included in this weekend’s performances, but I thought you would enjoy it.

And finally, here is a concert performance by Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic of the devastating ‘Death of Tybalt’, which will conclude the Romeo and Juliet suite in this weekend’s performances.
 

(These last two YouTube videos have "embedding" disabled, which means I can't post them inline here at the blog entry, but be sure to check out the links to view them directly on YouTube - they're both fantastic.)

See you at the symphony!

Every year, the Vienna Philharmonic, one of the world’s most acclaimed orchestras, performs a series of New Year’s Concerts on December 30, 31, and January 1.  These concerts have become beloved around the world through the annual broadcast of the New Year’s Day performance.  These programs feature almost exclusively Austrian music, and in particular, music of the Johann Strauss family:  waltzes, polkas, overtures, and the like.

 

I’m thrilled that this year, for the first time in a number of years, the ISO will be doing an entire New Year’s Eve performance inspired by this wonderful tradition, and I have the privilege of conducting it.  This is music that is very close to my heart – it has an elegance, charm, and nobility matched by little else in the repertoire.  I’ve done individual pieces from this concert on many other occasions in the past, but this will be my first time doing an entire concert of Viennese repertoire, so I’m really looking forward to it.

 

The video productions of the VPO concerts frequently feature dance performances with the musical ones, and so I’m delighted that in that spirit, Indy’s own Dance Kaleidoscope will be joining us on stage for several numbers.  I saw their choreography the other day, and DK Artistic Director David Hochoy has done a great job of capturing the special qualities of this music.  Also in the tradition of the VPO concerts, we will have a wonderful guest soprano, Jacqueline Brecheen, to sing several arias from Viennese operettas.

 

I’ll leave you with a video from the 1987 VPO performance, with Herbert von Karajan conducting the famous “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” waltzes, also featuring dancers from the Vienna State Opera Ballet.

 

See you (New Year’s Eve) at the Symphony!
 

That's the number of people in the audience the ISO and I played for on Sunday night when we performed the Star-Spangled Banner at the Colts-Patriots game at Lucas Oil Stadium - equivalent to almost 38 times the capacity of the Hilbert Circle Theater!  I'm guessing that it was the largest audience the ISO has ever played for, and it was definitely record attendance for Lucas Oil Stadium (they announced that later, during the game).

It was a pretty surreal experience all the way around - before we played, we were hanging out in the end zone (which is where we performed from) as the players were warming up, with practice kicks soaring practically over our heads through the uprights.  The crowd noise was unbelievable down on the field - the roar that went up as we got to the final phrase of the SSB, and as we finished, was overwhelming. 

Check out the video below, which starts as we're waiting for our cue, while the giant flag is being unrolled on the field.  Go Colts!

That was the advice given to me by a friend upon hearing that I would be conducting in front of a live audience of 63,000 people tonight.  Another friend of mine (this one is also a conductor) joked “Don’t screw it up, or your career will be over.”  The ISO and I are hitting the road tonight to perform in what is for us a pretty unusual (but exciting!) venue – Lucas Oil Stadium, about a mile away from our home at the Hilbert Circle Theater.  We’ll be playing the national anthem before the Colts-Patriots game, which is the featured game on Sunday Night Football tonight nationwide.  Go Colts!  Unfortunately, SNF rarely shows the national anthem on their broadcast (they tend to opt for Faith Hill’s prerecorded rendition of the SNF theme song instead).  But we’re all psyched anyway to get to play for such an enormous and passionate live audience, and one that certainly includes many people who have never heard the ISO live before.  This is actually our second performance at Lucas Oil Stadium, though our first at a game – we also performed there in August 2008 as part of the opening ceremonies for the stadium.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite versions of the national anthem.  Glenn Donnellan, a violinist with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., made an electric “violin” out of a baseball bat, and wrote his own arrangement of the Star-Spangled Banner to play on it.  Enjoy, and see you at the game!
 

Many thanks to everyone who helped make our first weekend of Sound Off such a great success.  For anyone who wasn’t there, Sound Off is the ISO’s new preconcert event (which I host) for our new concert series, Symphonic Hits powered by Lilly.

I’m hoping to see even more of you at Sound Off this coming weekend (6:30pm both Friday and Saturday nights, AKA one hour before the concert) for our second set of Symphonic Hits performances, which feature Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto 4-3, and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter,” all conducted by Michael Stern, music director of the Kansas City Symphony.  Our soloists for the Higdon concerto are none other than Time for Three (or Tf3 for short), the “classically trained garage band” co-founded by ISO concertmaster Zach de Pue. 

One feature of Sound Off is a segment I call “The Audience Wants to Know” (yes, cribbed from Jay Leno!), where we answer a question from you about orchestral music.   So, please send us your questions – what should we talk about this week?  You can submit your ideas by commenting on this blog post.

One thing we’re definitely going to talk about at Sound Off this week is the amazing last movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, which makes incredible use of what we in the music biz call fugal writing.  That means that it’s not a full-fledged fugue in a formal sense, but it uses the basic technique.  This reminded me of Glenn Gould’s classic vocal fugue, “So You Want to Write a Fugue”:

I also found this clever and funny demonstration of what a fugue is, using the theme from Britney Spears’ “Oops, I did it again”:
 

To further whet your appetite, here are a few more videos related to this week’s concerts.  First, a video that will give you a sense of the fantastic virtuosity and energy of Tf3, as well as a bit about their background, if you’ve never heard them before.



Second, a clip from NBC where Jennifer Higdon’s collaboration with Tf3 is discussed.

Here’s a very fine performance of the Beethoven Leonore Overture No. 3, with Fabio Luisi and the MDR Symphony in Leipzig (note: the video is in 2 parts):
 

And finally, here’s the last movement of the Mozart, performed by Karl Böhm and the Vienna Philharmonic (the other movements from this performance are also available on YouTube).

See you at the Symphony!