The Brooklyn Conservatory Community Orchestra (BCCO), led by its Music Director Dorothy Savitch, performed an afternoon of classical music spanning 180 years to a packed Brooklyn Museum Saturday 7th December.
The performance began with a rendition of the Siegfried Idyll by Richard Wagner, a delicate, soft Symphonic Poem for chamber orchestra. Wagner wrote the piece for his wife and first performed it with 15 musicians as she woke on Christmas morning in 1870, setting the bar absurdly high for those of us who can just about get the sprouts out on time.
The piece is gentle and beautiful, led by strings who never reach higher than a pianissimo whisper. A flute arrives, giving the audience an indulgent start to the weekend. After 20 minutes or so the piece breathes its last breath, coasting gently to a stop to enthusiastic applause.
Next up is Vivaldi’s Concerto for Oboe, strings and continuo, written more than 150 years earlier. This Baroque music contrasts vividly to the Romantic poetry of Wagner and was led by Alison Mari, the BCCO’s tenured principal oboe. Mari showed us that the oboe – presumably after far more years of dedication than the classmates who introduced me to it – can be a beautiful instrument.
The strings and oboe, accompanied by a harpsichord, deftly trade a call and response in melody. The piece is highly energetic, evoking, writes Mari in the program notes, the doomed search for an answer to some problem.
The Chief Executive of the BCCO spoke briefly to tell of the Orchestra’s long and proud history at the center of the community – he quoted a bulletin written in 1910 stating how the orchestra was open to anyone from any background. We heard of various fundraisers for the needy held throughout its lifetime, a refreshing reminder of the social power of music and the Orchestra’s mission.
The main event was Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. The 50-minute work is led by a central motif, dubbed the ‘fate theme’, which appears in various guises throughout its four movements.
The first movement, the Andante, begins with an ominous clarinet. Just at this moment a light draft breathes above our heads; is this fate, some extrasensory dimension slipping into the room? (Or did someone just open the door at the back?)
Finally, part way through this movement and after two relatively restrained performances, the Orchestra can huff out its full dynamic range. This – the raw acoustic power of lungs and fingers and elbows and chambers and valves – is the best part of seeing live classical music; there is something so powerful and timeless about seeing real people make this real sound. We feel it as much as we hear it.
The horns drive us to a staccato climax, pushing, for the time being, fate back whence it came.
The second movement begins with a French horn – plaintive and insecure. The horn and its brass-mates are the driving force behind the entire symphony, and Tchaikovsky and the BCCO show us that the French horn makes a strong case for the world’s most beautiful instrument. This sound, made by this person, is something otherworldly – pure, soft and perfect.
The theme is passed around the stage like a game of telephone, reminding us that one should never take this for granted, this primal, authentic, tangible magic that is acoustic live music. Later it returns once more, Darth Vader style this time – it’s that pesky fate come again to drag us out of our revery. The concert has ended and we must wake from this dreamlike state the BCCO has massaged us into. We trudge out into the cold December evening better-equipped, for this experience, to face whatever our fates hold.
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