First Night of the New Symphony Season
09/25/2024
I refer to the Mobile Symphony Orchestra. As I've had more than one occasion to mention here, there is something in the experience of live music that just can't be had by listening to recordings at home, no matter how good the recording or the system reproducing it. The orchestra doesn't have to be one of the world's greatest--a capable, enthusiastic, and hard-working one in a medium-sized city which is hardly a major cultural center is enough to give you that something.
The MSO plays at the Saenger Theater in downtown Mobile, which is where what people generally refer to as "nightlife" happens. On weekend nights especially, it's thronged with young and youngish people going to restaurants, clubs and bars. On symphony nights, of which there are only a half-dozen or so in the year, you also see a certain number of incongruous-looking older people, some of them downright elderly, many dressed much more formally than the young crowds. They--or we--look, and some of us feel, rather out of place--but some don't appear to feel that way at all, being well-to-do Old Mobilians who seem to regard themselves as the rightful proprietors of the area. By "Old Mobilians" I don't mean old people who live in Mobile but people who are of the families who have lived there for generations, or who are in the extensive network of friends, business associates, and others who might be called the ruling class of the city.
It's a shame that I can so easily identify symphony-goers by their age and class. But it is unfortunately the case that people who are interested in classical music tend to be older and more affluent. I don't think this is necessarily a sign of doom, though, as some think. It's somewhat natural that classical music would become more appealing to some people as they get older and, perhaps, more open to music with deeper and more lasting appeal than pop. Perhaps. Or perhaps attendance at the symphony is a bit of a status marker, or a mainly social event. I do sometimes overhear conversations which suggest to me that the speaker actually has little interest in the music itself. Well, that's ok: I'm glad they paid for a ticket and hope they keep doing it, and that they're getting some enjoyment out of it.
And the audience is by no means entirely made up of older people. There are quite a few younger ones, not the majority perhaps but a not-insignificant minority. A group of half a dozen or so who seemed to be quite young, probably not, or maybe just barely, out of their teens, was hanging out in the lobby at intermission, taking pictures of each other, and seeming to be having a great time. They didn't seem to be posturing or sneering or sulking or anything else except being young and lively. They asked me to take a picture of the entire group, which I was very pleased to do, for the sight of them had cheered me. Why were they there? It's fairly likely that they were music students.
Which does not necessarily mean that they are music enthusiasts. I think music students are sometimes required to go to concerts. The most hilariously un-enthusiastic remark I've ever heard at one of these concerts came from a group of music students who were sitting behind me in the very cheapest seats, way up in the balcony. Surveying the program before the concert started, one of them noted the symphony that would be the second half of the program and wailed to her friends "Y'all, they're going to play all four movements! We'll be here all night!" If I remember correctly they spared themselves that ordeal and left at intermission.
So much for social observations. What about the music? The first piece was Benjamin Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra," which as you probably know is meant to exhibit all the instruments in the orchestra, one by one, in a theme-and-variations. I'm pretty sure I'd heard it once or twice over the years and wasn't expecting much. But it's a much more substantial piece than I had thought. The theme is a grand tune from Purcell, and the variations are really pretty remarkable. They quickly went much further afield than I was able to follow, and the piece ends with what struck me as a rather wild fugue, and a restatement of the theme. If you can get over any patronizing sense that it's a merely pedagogical tool, this is a pretty impressive piece of music.
Next was the Barber Violin Concerto, with Randall Goosby as the soloist. A week or so before the concert I listened to a recording of the concerto, thinking that I had never heard it before and would at least get a little acquainted with it. But I immediately recognized the main melodies of the first movement, so obviously I had. And one of those melodies is now, four days later, sounding in my head, which means it ranks with some pop music in memorable tunefulness. I love that first movement, and may with a few more hearings love the whole concerto. The second movement has so far not made a strong impression, but the third is pretty striking: it's a very short, only four minutes or so, fast and furious thing, going at breakneck speed from start to finish, and, it seems to me as a non-violinist, making some pretty strong demands on the soloist. To my unexpert ears Goosby seemed to have no problems with it.
Then came a delightful surprise. Goosby's encore (much demanded) was a piece I had never heard of by a composer I had perhaps vaguely heard of, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. It's called "Louisiana Blues Strut" and is just 100% enjoyable for someone like me who likes the blues as much as he likes classical music. See what you think:
Here's a little about the composer.
The second half of the concert consisted of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances (op. 45). This was the last thing Rachmaninoff wrote before his death--which, I was a bit shocked to hear, occurred in 1940. Yes, I knew he had been born fairly late in the late 19th century (1873) and had lived and worked well into the 20th, but I somehow had the notion that he had not lived past its first couple of decades. Maybe that's because I think of him as a late Romantic composer. (If you do the arithmetic you'll note that this was not an exceptionally long life: 67 years. But the vast changes that occurred during that period make it, in effect, longer.)
I had not heard this piece before, and didn't have time to give it a hearing before the concert. So all I have is a first impression, which is that it's big and colorful and spectacular, but not especially profound or moving. That may be a totally unfair judgment--I repeat that it's tentative. It certainly has some materials for profundity, reaching into Rachmaninoff's personal history as well as Christian sources both Eastern and Western on the themes of death and resurrection. In any case it was very enjoyable, and I think is the kind of piece that the Mobile Symphony does well. Its conductor, Scott Speck, is a very energetic and enthusiastic person, and this performance was definitely both of those. I greatly enjoyed it, and it seemed that the entire audience did, too.