This was not an ordinary concert, not for us.
B. has decided to occupy much time in her retirement with practicing and improving her playing on the violin. Along with taking lessons and playing chamber music with friends, she's wanted to join a non-professional orchestra. She's been practicing with a wholly amateur group called the Terrible Adult Chamber Orchestra, which I've mentioned here before; but what I hadn't mentioned is her quest to try herself out in an ensemble which, while still non-professional, is a serious orchestra that puts on serious concerts.
And she alighted on this group, the Winchester Orchestra, which looked like a potentially achievable challenge and which offered the further temptation that their March concert was scheduled to include Beethoven's Fifth, a worthy goal for any orchestral musician to aim for. And so for a while, the sound of the second violin parts of Beethoven's Fifth and the other works on that program filled our house during B's lengthy home practice hours.
But then the omicron wave arrived, and the music director decided to postpone that concert and substitute an all-strings program so that everybody could be masked. And so B. switched to practicing this instead. Either way, she found it a challenge: the level and above all the speed at which the conductor had the orchestra play, the challenges of getting to nighttime rehearsals at the isolated music building in the back of a hillside junior college, and the sheer amount of time and sweat that practicing entails has made this more drudgery than fun. So for her next act, B. is thinking of going down a notch in the non-pro sweeps. More on that when performance time arrives.
But she made it through to this concert, and from this listener's standpoint it was worth the effort. The orchestra has the usual wobbles of a non-pro group, but mostly I thought it shone very nicely. The conductor, Scott Seaton, has a clear beat despite not using a baton in concert (he did at rehearsal), and has definite ideas about interpretive matters like emphasis and phrasing that he's able to communicate to the players and have them respond to. The result was a work of art in the performance as well as in the composition, and that's what you want of a concert.
The orchestra had further luck in the venue, a Mennonite (of all things) church in Willow Glen, whose small but spaciously-shaped sanctuary had stunningly great acoustics that gripped the 24-member orchestra and enlarged the sound to be as rich and full as it deserved. About 60 people attended and got to hear a good 75-minute concert. Winchester is so lucky it didn't wind up in the theatrical but unmusical Hammer Theatre in downtown San Jose like some of the other local groups.
The program included, as appetizer, Mozart's unutterably catchy Divertimento in F, K. 138, which I was surprised to find, when the conductor asked, that I was one of only 2 people in the audience who knew it; for the main course, Tchaikovsky's gorgeous and wholly characteristic Serenade; and for dessert, an arrangement of Astor Piazzolla's lively little Libertango for strings plus piano and clonk (I don't know what it's called, but you hit the two halves of it together and it goes clonk). Plus, as unscheduled introduction, the national anthem of Ukraine. Because of course you do that.
Thanks for attending and reviewing our concert! I was the first chair viola. I've been following your blog for a couple months now since I noticed that you have reviewed a lot of groups I play in (Cambrian, Mission Chamber, Saratoga, etc.). It's fantastic to get that kind of perspective as a musician. All this info about the wobbles and the acoustics, I love all of it, it's info I would never have received otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI remember two people raising their hands, though I can't remember what either of you looked like. Also, the clonk are called claves, Spanish pronunciation :)
Thank you again!