From Adams to Shostakovich: NPO Ends Season Powerfully
This year, the Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra (NPO) completed their twenty-second performance season. The NPO is a volunteer community orchestra that has been committed to bringing free, high-level concerts to the Nashville area for every single one of those twenty-two seasons. Through these free concerts the NPO wishes to bring a larger audience into the world of classical music so they too may enjoy its beauty. To close their Dr. Virginia and Dan Norton Memorial Season, they put together a modern program and featuring three pieces all composed after 1950: John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine,(conducted by Vaughn Richardson) Christopher Theofanidis’ Rainbow Body and the final statement of their season was punctuated by Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10.
John Adams is one of the most prolific modern American composers. Most of his compositions are a part of the minimalist and postminimalist tradition that had a grasp on the American contemporary music scene for decades. He borrows the minimalist techniques of repeated rhythmic devices found often with Phillip Glass and Steve Reich while combining this with orchestration that resembles the grand works by Wagner and Mahler. These attributes are ever present in Short Ride in a Fast Machine, which Adams himself called a “Fanfare for Orchestra.” Specifically, there is a constant woodblock throughout the piece that was played excellently by Music Director Chris Norton. The wood block often works against rhythms played by the rest of the orchestra creating a nice polyrhythmic texture and rhythmic dissonance. I feel this was emphasized especially with the strong entrances of the brass throughout the performance. Harmonically, this piece is complex and employs more minimalist techniques.
Specifically, it uses sorts of harmonic transformations often having two or three pitches that remain constant while the harmonic structure around them transforms. Despite some tuning issues with some of the winds and brass, it was a great selection for the beginning of the concert.
Following the Adams, Chris Norton took back the reins as conductor for Theofanidis’ Rainbow Body. I was not familiar with this piece going into the concert, but it has fascinated me ever since hearing it. Theofanidis’ inspiration for this piece is a cross-cultural synthesis of Hildegard von Bingen’s medieval Catholic chants and the Tibetan Buddhist idea of “rainbow body.” In the Buddhist ideology, the rainbow body is the level of realization where one’s physical body is transcended into light. This is reflected in the orchestration and loose setting of Hildegard’s “Ave Maria, o auctrix vite.” The piece was easily digestible with mixtures of light strings, sonic spaces, woodwind interjections and echoing brass calls. At times, I would close my eyes and could envision the colorful lights of a rainbow or light flooding in through stained glass. Though Hildegard’s poems have been set to music for centuries, this piece felt like a novel take on her writing, and this second statement during the concert was much more delightful than the first.
The final punctuation on the NPO’s season was Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony. It is a massive work that is often connected to the death of Shostakovich’s “biggest fan” (not really) Joseph Stalin. The first movement is the longest of all the movements and spans well over twenty minutes on its own. It is a large, slow sonata form that features several allusions to several other of Shostakovich’s works, especially his settings of Alexander Pushkin which he also references in his 5th Symphony. The second movement is where the greatest connection to Stalin is made. Musicologist and Shostakovich scholar Solomon Volkov curated a collection of Shostakovich’s memoirs and put them in a book alongside some commentary. In this book, Shostakovich specifically calls the Scherzo a “musical portrait of Stalin, roughly speaking.” However, other musicologists such as Richard Taruskin propose that rather than a true biographical or portrait-like depiction of Stalin, the symphony is a commentary on the era of Stalin’s reign.
The third movement is fascinating and features Shostakovich’s signature and frequent musical coding. In this movement he literally signs the piece by etching D-S-C-H (or D-Eb-C-B) into the music alongside another code called Elmira (E-La-Mi-Re-A or E-A-E-D-A) which represents
who was a great friend of the composer. The two themes begin apart but draw closer and closer together as the movement progresses, indicating the friendship that grew between the two. The final movement begins slowly but it abruptly transitions into an allegro with the reentry of the D-S-C-H signature. The allegro features a kind of jubilation while shifting from E minor to E major, perhaps representing the relief of the death of the tyrant Stalin.
This was by far the best piece of the day. It showed that the orchestra paid special attention to the Symphony and it was magnificent. I appreciated the commentary given by Norton preceding this piece. He spoke on the gravity of the topic and how Shostakovich intertwined his own name into the music alongside playing the theme for the audience to hear before the piece began. I thought this effort to show and make people aware of the intricacies of this music was a great step towards progressing their mission of bringing in new ears and minds to witness this music.
Overall, I think the concert was a success and a great end to their season. It was a pleasant concert to attend on a beautiful day in Nashville. I always appreciate the programming of the NPO and their commitment to playing everything. I am eager to hear what the next season will have to offer.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
My name is Brennan Wagner, I am currently a Music Industry student at Middle Tennessee State University and planning on pursuing Musicology in graduate school. I am from Nashville and have been playing saxophone for almost 10 years and love attending local concerts of all genres.
