Picking My Program – The Big Piece

For the final audition in our selection process, each of the three conductors gets to rehearse and perform one concert. Each finalist chooses his (no hers involved, unfortunately) own program, based on a theme. Mine is “Classical with a Twist.” Not sure what that means.

          The interim conductor, who unfortunately has the inside track on the final job here as in all other interim situations, will do the Christmas concert. This is another big advantage for the candidate let’s call T. We do two performances of the Christmas concert to accommodate all the attendees, since our hall is rather small. Good, but small. The other finalist, let’s call him M, will do the November concert.

          I get the September concert, the first of the year. Good in that I can make the first impression and set the bar for the others, and bad in that ramping up is a slow process that makes for some sparse rehearsals. Many players don’t play in other groups, so they will be out of practice and showing up with spaghetti fingers and floppy lips. The group discipline, such as we have, has disappeared since the last concert in May. What music do I pick to work around this and still make a wonderful impression on the board so I get chosen to be conductor?

          As with most community orchestras, the winds and brass carry the strings. But the late romantic pieces that feature the most brass and winds also require serious string playing. Can you really perform Brahms with six first violins? We did last May, but we didn’t do it all that well.

          SOOOoooo, I’m picking music that avoids technical string (meaning violin, mostly) parts as much as possible. For the big piece, I’m programming the Schubert Eighth Symphony, the Unfinished Symphony. I really wanted to perform Mendelssohn’s Fourth, the Italian. One of my favorite symphonies, and it’s about the same length and instrumentation as the Schubert. But I’ve performed the Mendelssohn, and it’s got a lot of notes for the strings, many of which are exposed during tricky and difficult passages.

          We have six rehearsals before the first concert. Many players will miss one or two, including many of the violins. Can I flog them in rehearsal enough to make the quick and exposed violin lines in the Mendelssohn clean and crisp? Almost certainly not, especially during the first concert.

          I’ve noticed a trend in community orchestras at our level, based on us and my time in another orchestra for years. Conductors program big pieces like the Houston and Dallas symphonies perform, and the bulk of rehearsal time gets spent on the big, loud, and difficult sections. Do we play them cleanly and crisply? Not really, but a good brass section goes a long way in loud passages.

         That doesn’t bother me as much as the fact that we don’t play the less technical sections well, either. The parts that people can play well enough the first time through don’t get worked on enough. Those are often the most beautiful parts, the slow movements that can be shaped and made gorgeous when we have the time. But rehearsal attention goes to the loud and complex sections because the notes and rhythms in those parts are so hard to play accurately.

          The Schubert Eighth is beautiful, well known, and slow enough that all notes are playable by all the orchestra members. Once the notes are down, the conductor (me, for this concert and many more I hope) can then work on the music. And there’s a ton of lovely sections in the Schubert to fill the ears of our audience and have them humming on the way home.

         I wish the Schubert had a big loud ending, like his Ninth Symphony or the Mendelssohn Fourth, but it doesn’t. One must make choices, and I’m choosing lovely and well-played over loud and sloppy. If the audience goes away humming the tune, that's a good thing.