United States Solar Valley Music Competition [1]: Solar Valley Pavilion, Solar Valley, Idaho, 11 & 12.8.2024. (RP)
On a Sunday night with good climate, 3177 folks heard Mahler’s Symphony No.6 carried out by the Solar Valley Competition Orchestra underneath the baton of music director Alasdair Neale. That will be a powerful quantity anyplace, however what makes it particularly so is that admission is free.
The SVMF is celebrating its fortieth anniversary, and free music for all has been their ethos from the start. The beginning time at 6:30 within the night and an hour-long program are all however inviolable, however with a piece just like the Mahler Sixth, guidelines are clearly meant to be damaged.
One other particular facet of the orchestra is its relationship with the group. Neale, now in his thirtieth 12 months because the competition’s music director, says folks within the Solar Valley space consider it as ‘our orchestra’. The group’s embrace extends past monetary help, volunteering in numerous capacities and attendance at live shows: greater than eighty supporters host musicians for the month they’re in Solar Valley rehearsing and performing.
When Neale arrived on the world-famous ski resort in 1994, he was employed to conduct a chamber orchestra that carried out in a pop-up tent on a gravel floor. He dreamed of a everlasting construction for the orchestra and in 2008, largely because of the efforts of the late Robert Earl Holding, it grew to become a actuality. Holding was the proprietor of Solar Valley Resort, based in 1936 by Union Pacific scion Averill Harriman. Neale describes Holding’s method as, ‘If one thing is price doing, it’s price overdoing’. So it was with the Solar Valley Pavilion.
The ensuing construction, which consists of an arced tubular metal truss and translucent tent material, was accomplished in 2008. The setting within the Rocky Mountains of central Idaho is spectacular, and its kind echoes the gently rolling slopes of Greenback Mountain past. Beneath the tented construction, the pavilion can seat 1561, with seating for one more 4000 on the grass. The pavilion’s partitions are fabricated from 1000 tons of travertine marble extracted from the identical quarry that provided the Colosseum in Rome. Maybe of extra significance, the pavilion has excellent acoustics.
Mahler as soon as referred to his Sixth Symphony as ‘Tragic’, though it was composed at one of many happiest occasions of his life. It was accomplished over the summers of 1903 and 1904 on the Wörthersee in Austria the place Mahler summered together with his spouse Alma and two daughters. He was preoccupied with gloomy ideas – along with the symphony, he was engaged on Kindertotenlieder, a music cycle ruminating on the dying of kids.
Whether or not or not premonitions of doom had been imbedded within the symphony, misfortune undoubtedly got here his manner. Inside a 12 months of the symphony’s premiere in 1906, Mahler’s four-year-old daughter Maria died, his finally deadly coronary heart situation was recognized, and he left the Vienna Opera, the place he had been director since 1897, underneath a cloud.
It was unavoidable that Neale would delve deeply into the tragic depths of the symphony, however this efficiency additionally contained moments of absolute pleasure and aching lyricism. Neale met the symphony’s contradictions head on. Mahler’s tempo markings for the primary motion – Allegro energico man non troppo heftig aber markig, which means ‘energetically quick, however not an excessive amount of, vigorous however emphatic’ – had been heeded, with the end result being a studying of this monumental motion that was taut and thrilling.
The sound produced by the 107 musicians on stage had a visceral vibrancy and immediacy. Within the first motion, the brass enjoying was excellent, however by no means extra so than within the coda the place it was loud, great and brimming with optimism. Three cymbals crashing within the closing motion had been as thrilling to observe as they had been terrifying to listen to.
Mahler referred to as for musical particular results all through the piece, most notably in using cowbells and a percussion instrument that got here to be generally known as the ‘Mahler hammer’. The out of doors setting yielded sonic delights with bells and chimes resonating from contained in the corridor in addition to exterior. These sounds lent a sure lightness to the efficiency.
Doom was to observe, nevertheless, with nice slashes of sound within the Finale, which Mahler instructed had been to be ‘transient and mighty however uninteresting in resonance and with a non-metallic character – like the autumn of an axe’. The answer for this efficiency was a purpose-built picket field which Neale stated was dubbed the ‘Huge Brown Field of Doom’. When struck twice with an outsized mallet borrowed from the San Francisco Orchestra, the ensuing sound was loud and ominous.
The members of the Solar Valley Music Competition Orchestra have positions with a few of America’s finest symphonies, and the standard of enjoying was on the highest degree. Mahler peppered the rating with solo passages that had been carried out beautifully. Principal horn Elizabeth Freimuth’s tone was molten and wealthy all through and, within the first motion, her sound blended splendidly with that of concertmaster Jeremy Fixed. As with Freimuth, principal oboe Erik Behr’s enjoying lent character and sweetness in any respect turns.
After the exhilaration and extra of Mahler, the ear was cleansed the next night with a brief live performance within the pavilion carried out by a wind quintet comprised of principal flautist Ann Choomack, principal clarinetist Susan Warner and principal bassoonist Andrew Cuneo, along with Behr and Freimuth. It was pure ear sweet however of one of the best type.
The primary work on this system was Aaron Copland’s ‘Easy Presents’, organized by Warner. Cuneo launched the acquainted melody on the bassoon, with the 4 different devices offering musical punctuation. Warner’s association captured the simplicity of the nineteenth-century Shaker music whereas investing it with singular sonorities and an awesome depth of feeling.
Ardour reigned within the quintet’s efficiency of Jacob Gade’s ‘Tango Jalousie’ relationship from 1924. The Danish composer was impressed to compose the piece after studying a sensational information report of against the law of ardour and turning into fixated on the idea of jealousy.
It was adopted by three of twentieth-century composer Ferenc Farkas’s Early Hungarian Dances. This was far earthier music with fully completely different rhythms and textures than any of the opposite items. It was, nevertheless, as piquant because the tango that preceded it and two alternatives from the Cuban-American composer Paquito D’Rivera’s Aires Tropicales which introduced the live performance to an finish.
Rick Perdian
11.8.2024 – Solar Valley Music Competition Orchestra / Alasdair Neale (conductor).
Mahler – Symphony No.6 in A minor, ‘Tragic’
12.8.2024 – Ann Choomack (flute), Erik Behr (oboe), Susan Warner (clarinet), Andrew Cuneo (bassoon), Elizabeth Freimuth (horn).
Copland (arr. Susan Warner) – ‘Easy Presents’ from Appalachian Spring
Jacob Gade (arr. Stig Jorgensen) – ‘Tango Jalousie’
Ferenc Farkas – Early Hungarian Dances: I. Intrada, IV. Chorea, V. Ugros
Paquito D’Rivera – Aires Tropicales: IV. ‘Vals Venezolano’, V. ‘Contradanza’
