At the Schermerhorn
The Nashville Symphony Reflects on Hope
The fortunate Nashville Symphony audience attending either “Reflections and Hope” performances experienced profound, deeply moving music. And the audience on Saturday night knew it. Though sparsely attended—undeservedly so—the potent silences, the vigorous applause, and the numerous standing ovations acknowledged both the musical excellence of the performances, ably led by talented conductor, Christian Reif, and the depth of meaning in each composition, particularly in the first half.
The second half of the program, the second and last symphony by Kurt Weill, was certainly an attractive and well-crafted opus. Weill, better known for collaborating with Bertolt Brecht in stage works with tunes like “Mac the Knife,” from Threepenny Opera in 1928, revealed himself to be a fully equipped composer. But the first half of the program left its influence well through intermission and into Weill’s first of three movements. It would be nice to hear his symphony again in less potent company.
Beginning the program with Ives’ “Unanswered Question,”was a stroke of genius. This unusually powerful piece the composer called a “cosmic drama” layers three parts of existence: a solo trumpet, as a lone soul posing the eternal question of life’s meaning, four flutes representing the world’s chaos, and the string section whose celestial harmonies move as slowly as timelessness itself. With the strings at stage center, the trumpet in one balcony and the flutes in another, the performance balanced motion and stasis, visually and musically.
Principal trumpeter, William Leathers, performed the trumpet melody, designed in the shape of a question mark, with just the right amount of tonal purity and languid phrasing alternating with flute harmonies and rhythms that clash against one another in frantic confusion. But throughout it all, the strings, whose bows move so slowly you can barely see the movement, keep the calm, a calm not so much peaceful, but accepting.
Technically, this is one of the most challenging movements for strings, requiring beauty of timbre and complete control of the infinitessimal dynamic changes. The Symphony strings’ gorgeous balance was up to the challenge. Ironically, had the flutes been less beautiful, with less vibrato and more fierceness in their articulation, their representation of chaos could have been more effective. Only their last entrance seemed to get to the right emotional space.
Born in Lexington Kentucky, Julia Perry a talented singer, decided to focus her effort on composition, studying at the Westminster Choir College in the late 1940s and in Europe with Luigi Dallapiccola and Nadia Boulanger (the same teacher who mentored Aaron Copland). Her Stabat Mater, composed in 1951, featured Grammy-winning singer J’Nai Bridges. Bridges is known for her lush tone and for her commitment to issues of social justice. Recently, in addition to performing the title role of Bizet’s Carmen in Spain, she premiered American composer Adolphus Hailstork’s work, A Knee on the Neck in Washington DC.
The thirteenth-century Stabat Mater text follows the mourning of Mary as her son Jesus dies on the cross. The richness of Bridges’ tone, especially in the lowest register, reminds us what a true contralto can really be. Concertmaster Peter Otto matched that beauty with his solo before and after the text “O quam tristis et afflicta fuit illa benedicta Mater Unigeniti.” [Oh what sadness and suffering for the blessed mother of the only-begotten one). After a call and response section between singer and orchestra (“allow me to feel the power of your grief, so that I might mourn with you”), Bridges skillfully adjusted her vibrato for a section clearly influenced by medieval plainchant with its unisons and parallel fifths.
The issue of texts is the only criticism I would offer of Bridges’s performance. Because of the program’s theme, the words are of integral importance, particularly the Gorman text, which is not well-known. Bridges’ pitch, timbre, and dynamics were perfectly under control, but clear enunciation was vital to meaning in both vocal pieces; its absence was a disappointment.
In his through-composed setting of “Hymn for the Hurting” by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, Brian Field teams with Gorman, known for reciting “The Hill We Climb” at the 2020 inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden. Gorman rarely allows her poems to be set to music but, overall, she chose well in Brian Field. Winner of multiple composition awards, Field is also known for his commitment to addressing social issues through music, like his orchestral tone poem “From the Clash of Race and Creed.” The combination of Field, Bridges, and Gorman was the ideal collaboration for a poem expressing the hope that the pain of our loss of so many children in their schools through gun violence will somehow spur us on to do something meaningful to protect as the Bible says “the least of these.”
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Y Kendall is a Stanford-educated musicologist, specializing in dance history who recently earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Columbia University, studying nonfiction writing with Ben Ratliff and Margo Jefferson. Kendall’s diverse works have been published in Alchemy: Journal of Translation, Columbia Journal, Mitos Magazín, The Hunger Mountain Review, and The Salt Collective, among others. Born and raised in Tennessee, Kendall now lives near Nashville, freelancing as a flutist and writer, while caregiving for relatives.
