Count Basie Center, Red Bank. (Balcony, Seat Balcony J104, $36).
Program
Pomp and Circumstances Military March in D Major,
Op. 39, No. 1 (1901) by Elgar (1857-1934).
Hiraeth (with film by Mark DeChiazza) (2015) by
Snider (b. 1973).
The Planets, Suite for Large Orchestra, Op. 32
(1914-16) – An HD Odyessey by Holst (1874-1934).
Artists
Newark Voices, Heather J. Buchanan, conductor.
Film of Planets produced by Duncan Copp.
This was the opening series of NJ Symphony’s 2019/20
season, and our last orchestral concert was a Mostly Mozart in August. I was looking forward to it.
For a season opener the program is somewhat
unexpected. Two of the pieces were by
British composers; and there was a NJSO premiere of a piece by a Princeton
(town, not University) composer. I
vaguely recall the National Anthem being played at the beginning of last
season, although I didn’t note that in my blog entry. Zhang did talk a bit about the program before
the concert, and introduced the composer to the audience. The other “new” aspect was the projection of
videos onto the screen with the music. A
little more on that later.
Pomp and Circumstances is often played during graduation
ceremonies (usually the middle portion), and is as good as any other piece of
“incidental” music to start a program.
Hiraeth is a Welsh word that per the Program Notes
translates roughly into “homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the
lost or departed; a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness.” Sarah Kirkland Snider, born and currently
resides in Princeton, spent considerable time in North Carolina as a kid, and
the music was further informed by the funeral of her father. In the Program Notes there are some
references to specific incidences, and the film showed a few additional ones
(frog being released, rain drops, cigarette smoking, and images of her father’s
twin brother come to mind). One can
certainly conjure up feelings and images of hiraeth, but I am also sure most
would have different musical ideas.
Putting feelings into music is always a tricky thing, sometimes you
“resonate,” sometimes you don’t. In this
case I didn’t resonate.
And as far as I know, neither Kirkland nor Snider is a Welsh family name.
Having a video playing at the same time also taxed my
“appreciation bandwidth.” I could either
pay attention to the video, or focus on the music, but not both. And between visual and aural, visual
won. Even though the video wasn’t
particularly exciting, I still had to remind myself the music was not the
accompaniment, but was the main “attraction.”
There was a continuity to the music that bordered on being monotonous,
and some passages reminded me of Philip Glass, and that may or may not be a
compliment.
Mark DeChiazza and Sarah Kirkland Snider after the performance of Hiraeth.
Anyhow, I didn’t think it was a waste of time, but have
no urge to hear it again.
Most people know about Holst’s The Planets, including me,
but other than isolated movements (Jupiter probably is the most popular),
haven’t heard the composition in its entirety.
Tonight we got the chance to do so.
Holst wrote seven movements, he skipped Earth, and Pluto
wasn’t discovered until 1930 or so. Different section principals got to perform
some pleasant solo passages, in that sense this could be considered a “concerto
for orchestra.” The movements are (i)
Mars, the Bringer of War; (ii) Venus, the Bringer of Peace; (iii) Mercury, the
Winged Messenger; (iv) Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity; (v) Saturn, the Bringer
of Old Age; (vi) Uranus, the Magician; and (vii) Neptune, the Mystic. The last movement had a treble choir singing
(no words), supposedly to add to the mysticism.
Overall, the music was pleasant. For each movement actual images of the specific
planet were projected onto the screen. As
I sat through the images, I was struck by how little I knew about the planets
beyond the superficial facts. For
example, I knew about the rings of Saturn, and that the rings are very thin,
and that it has a contingent of moons.
However, I wasn’t sure if the planet was gaseous (it is, but has a solid
core), or how many moons there are (60 or more; Wikipedia claims 82), or what they
are made of (Titan is a rocky core with layers of ice).
Now it would be quite something if Holst had been writing
the individual movements with this latest scientific information in mind. He certainly couldn’t have. Instead he was for instance probably trying
to conjure up images of war with the Mars movement instead of trying to
describe the rugged red planet as videoed by the rovers Spirit and
Opportunity. Someone with enough bandwidth
for both the audio and visual components would end up with cognitive dissonance.
Newark Voices, a female vocal group, sang (without words) during the last
movement.
The NJSO and the women’s group performed an encore: Ralph
Vaugh Williams’ adaption of Greensleeves.
It’s clear I am not a fan of this sort of multi-media
projection. On the other hand, this
seemed to be one of the better attended Count Basie NJSO concerts, so the NJSO
may be onto something here.
Today was a relatively long day. We left our house a bit before 11 am to go to
Princeton for lunch with Tammy, and then attended Maryann’s birthday party in
Little Silver. We did have a bit of time
to spare between that party and the concert, but not enough time that we could
go back to South Amboy. It was close to
11 pm when we got home.
