Beauty, drama, and supportive emotional depth: Santa Cruz Symphony and Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus perform their Grand Finale concert

Beauty, drama, and supportive emotional depth: Santa Cruz Symphony and Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus perform their Grand Finale concert

Maestro Danny Stewart realized the cosmic projections Wagner intended in his Vorspiel (Prelude) to Act I of Lohengrin, Wagner’s fourth opera. Stewart guided and captured the evasive, catastrophic heavenly explosion depicted during the orchestral prelude that challenges dynamically the very finest orchestras in the world. Wagner’s Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin is a dreamlike kaleidoscope of orchestral color.

The violin string quartet opened the Prelude in the highest register of the orchestra with a shimmering A-major chord designated pp (pianissimo) balanced to perfection, certainly a mark of the orchestra’s musical quality. This single, floating chord appeared as a blur of shifting color and light intensified by the flutes and oboes. The texture was enhanced by the alternating and overlapping sonorities of the strings and winds. In this magical music, Stewart made certain the familiar instruments of the orchestra seemed to dissolve into new, unidentifiable celestial sounds.

The Prelude unfolded as a gradual cosmic crescendo. As new instrumental voices entered, the theme took on increasing nobility. In the context of the opera, this process symbolized the angelic descent of the Holy Grail to Earth. At the 8:30 mark, Stewart guided the orchestra to a new dynamic level. The beginning of endless orchestral sonic waves began to crest and fall, altering one’s perception of time.

A transfiguring harmonic shift unlocked the door to the Prelude’s majestic dramatic apex that alluded to the Greek legend of Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods for eternity to roll repeatedly a boulder up a hill only to have it fall back down. Stewart and orchestra succeeded in the ascent! This amazing feat was accomplished by Stewart and the orchestra at the 9-minute mark when the decrescendo diminuendo began its descent and vaporescence. Its afterglow faded into a passage filled with quiet tension and surrealistic mystery in which the violins in the upper register descended as the double basses rose. With this, Wagner completed the intended arch form of the prelude.

There is only one theme in the prelude; however, it is used throughout the opera, mainly for Lohengrin’s actions, and is perhaps one of the origins of Wagner’s use of a leitmotif in his music. The Prelude evaporated as it began with a kaleidoscopic A-major chord.

The Elemental Prayer Suite (World Premiere) by Carl St. Jacques (1980-2022) featured Maestro Danny Stewart on viola. St. Jacques writes: “I am a passionate violist who feels music has always been life-changing and affirming. From solo to ensemble playing to outreach and teaching, for me, viola performance is a life calling. It is my vocation to be a compelling artist, advocate of the viola, and bridge for many to classical music. I aim to do this by sharing music with all expressing my true voice, musicianship, and message.”

This work is a meditation-based composition that utilizes the solo voice of the viola to take the listener on a musical journey through the natural elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether. St. Jacques states “The inspiration for this unique composition comes from the Sufi teachings of The Five Aspects of Prayer and the Five Elements by Pir Zia Inayat-Khan.” The rich tonal palette of the viola was certainly on display by the multifaceted Maestro Stewart. The orchestra emphasized its beauty, drama, and supportive emotional depth. The lovely tone of the viola was perfectly suited to the composer’s approach and the strings offered a background texture of pizzicato punctuation and effective tremolos. Overall, this was a deeply moving performance.

Caroline Shaw (1982) is a New York-based musician, vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer who performs in solo and collaborative projects. Shaw states “From the beginning, Music in Common Time was a dream project. Not just for the prospect of bringing together some of my favorite musical colleagues from different worlds, but also for the sonic possibilities of combining A Far Cry’s rich string sound with Roomful of Teeth’s varied vocal timbres.”

Shaw’s Music in Common Time began with a D-major chord that led into strings playing arpeggios and humming voices. At this point, the distinction between performance and composition became clear and important. A work must offer material with which to explore the magnitude of creative possibilities of “varied vocal timbers” that exist with a chorus of 50 and a splendid orchestra. In some ways, the work reflected the incredible one-man, 10-time Grammy Award music machine Bobby McFerrin, who blurred that distinction with the exploration of uncharted vocal creativity.

The Grand Finale concert ended with Wagner’s Entrance of the Guests from Tannhäuser, Act II, the Pilgrim’s Chorus from Tannhäuser, Act III, and the Final Chorus from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Act III. The audience enjoyed the impressive collaboration between the orchestra and Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus. Under the direction of long-time Director Cheryl Anderson, the chorus was in good form and sang with rich gusto, respectable textural clarity enhanced by the subtle, well-balanced dialogue between orchestra and chorus.

Tannhäuser is an important milestone on Wagner’s path to musical drama. The dramatic contrasts between darkness and light were of particular, highlighted in particular, a mark of Maestro Stewart’s tenure with the Metropolitan Opera. It appeared that every bar surged with energy, orchestral thrust, warmth of tone, and marvelous detail. Stewart emphasized the flickering motifs that in turn emphasized Wagner’s masterful orchestration of gently layering woodwinds on top of the rich string sonority. The chorus entrances and overall balance were well done.

Maestro Stewart has created an impressive musical atmosphere based on mutual respect and partnership. Stewart’s persistence to realize intimate detail and the best way to utilize it has become the Maestro’s trademark.

JOSEF SEKON D.M.A.

Grand Finale featuring the cabrillo symphonic chorus!

SUBLIME, EMOTIONALLY MOVING WORKS

We'll be ending our season on a high note with Grand Finale on April 29 and 30! This program will highlight ecstasies and explorations of the human psyche, featuring dazzling contemporary textures by Caroline Shaw, the posthumous world premiere of The Elemental Prayer Suite by Carl St. Jacques, and the radiant grandeur of choral highlights from the operas of Richard Wagner, all in collaboration with the Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus.

If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of hearing the Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus perform, you’ll definitely want to attend this concert! Under the direction of Cheryl Anderson, this group has achieved a stellar reputation at home in the Monterey Bay as well as internationally by performing in the finest concert halls in the USA and Europe. The Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus consistently evokes a sense of beauty and wonder with the lushness and fluidity of their technique.

Director Cheryl Anderson has spent her musical career conducting choirs and orchestras around the world, in addition to performing as a professional soloist and chorister. She sang for years with Robert Shaw and was a Conducting Fellow and singer with Helmuth Rilling and the Oregon Bach Festival. The various choirs under Cheryl's direction have sung concert tours all over the world, including at the Vatican and Carnegie Hall, and tours through California performing with Lou Harrison and his masterwork La Koro Sutro and the internationally famous Incheon City Chorale from South Korea at Davies Symphony Hall.

Cheryl’s leadership of the chorus and collaboration with Maestro Daniel Stewart will seamlessly unite the singers, the orchestra, and the music itself. Expect an exhilarating experience with these sublime and emotionally moving works! Tickets are on sale now.

WHEN AND WHERE:

April 29 at 7:30 PM, Civic Auditorium

April 30 at 2 PM, Mello Center

A NOTE ABOUT PERFORMING WAGNER:

As we present these selections from Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Die Meistersinger, we can’t ignore the history and truth surrounding one of the most prominent (and controversial) composers in opera, and the implications that follow in performing his work. Below is a statement from the LA Opera that we feel expresses our own position as we bring the music of Richard Wagner to our audience:

While Wagner is considered one of the most important and influential of all composers, he is also rightly reviled as having been an overt anti-Semite. Wagner’s writings on the subject percolated into German politics and popular culture and, decades after the composer’s death, were thought by many to inspire Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich. It is not our intention to block out this abhorrent truth about the composer during this production, pretending that separating the man from the art is enough.

We perform his work observing its aesthetic influence and its centrality to the operatic repertoire, while fully acknowledging the moral issues that implicitly come with it. We continue to commit to exploring, discussing and bringing to light these issues. In fact, now is an even more important time than ever to confront truths about our history and our past.

We've also shared a message from members of the Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus about performing Wagner: click here to read it on our website.

Performing Wagner: A Message from the Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus

As we prepare for our Grand Finale concerts this weekend, we wanted to share this message from the Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus regarding the performance of works by Richard Wagner.

Several chorus members started a conversation about how to approach the controversy that Wagner continues to provoke. Both the artists who perform his works and the audiences who experience them may be troubled by Wagner’s history of anti-Semitism and wholesale adoption by the Nazis many years after his death. You’ll hear the chorus repeatedly sing “Heil,” which means “Hail.” In Latin texts, we would sing “Ave.” Hearing “Ave” to honor and welcome the visiting dignitary in Die Meistersinger wouldn’t likely cause discomfort, but hearing “heil” might. Even knowing the context may not lessen the negative charge in hearing the word most closely associated with the Nazi salute. Other texts extol the virtue of German arts and the assertion that those who create them are masters of high art.

Wagner was a man of his time, composing during the fierce nationalism of the mid-nineteenth century. He is considered a musical genius, and credited with many innovations that shaped the course of Western music, such as melding the artistic forms of music, libretto, theater sets. He was the first to write “leit-motifs,” those musical themes associated with specific theatrical characters (think: Darth Vader’s Theme, or Hedwig’s Theme in the Harry Potter movies).  Wagner’s text expresses explicit nationalism, which is troubling today given how it was embraced and weaponized by the German government in the 1930s and 40s. 

Wagner’s well-known and openly expressed anti-Semitism was concerning during his lifetime—and sometimes explained as a “personal” attack on individual competitors who happened to be Jewish, rather than a consuming ideology. But its explicit adoption later by the Nazi regime, along with their idolization of Wagner as a symbol of German culture, makes him a controversial figure to this day beyond his less-than-exemplary patterns of fleeing debt and flagrant womanizing.

As Leonard Bernstein said: “How can so great an artist—so prophetic, so profoundly understanding of the human condition, of human strengths and flaws, so Shakespearean in the simultaneous vastness and specific detail of his perceptions, to say nothing of his mind-boggling musical mastery—how can this first-class genius have been such a third-rate man?” (Quoted from the Smithsonian magazine: The Brilliant, Troubled Legacy of Richard Wagner)

We can imagine separating the artist from his art, as was previously the ideal in academic art history. Zubin Mehta even brought Wagner’s work to Israel in the 1970s. Perhaps more valuable than ignoring the sins of the artist is to understand them and learn from them—not forgive and forget them, but remember—and appreciate the art despite them. 

Yours in music,

Members of the Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus

ECSTASIES AND EXPLORATIONS

ECSTASIES AND EXPLORATIONS OF THE HUMAN PSYCHE

We'll be ending our season on a high note with Grand Finale on April 29 and 30! This program will highlight ecstasies and explorations of the human psyche, featuring dazzling contemporary textures by Caroline Shaw, the posthumous world premiere of The Elemental Prayer Suite by Carl St. Jacques, and the radiant grandeur of choral highlights from the operas of Richard Wagner, all in collaboration with the Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus.

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw combines 17th and 18th century forms with modern tonal music to create a unique voice. We'll experience extensive harmonies and a variety of timbres and textures in her Music in Common Time. We'll also hear The Elemental Prayer Suite by Carl St. Jacques, a meditation-based composition using the solo voice of the viola (performed by Maestro Daniel Stewart!) to take the listener on a musical journey through the natural elements Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether.

Interspersed throughout the program will be selections from Richard Wagner's Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, and Die Meistersinger. The most influential musician of his era after Beethoven, Wagner reinvented opera and led the way to musical modernism. In these excerpts we'll enjoy his innovative use of harmony and explicit attention to the sensuous nature of the musical experience.

Join us in appreciating these sublime, emotionally moving works! Tickets are on sale now.

WHEN AND WHERE:

April 29 at 7:30 PM, Civic Auditorium

April 30 at 2 PM, Mello Center

Josef Sekon’s review of HERO’S JOURNEY

Reviewer Josef Sekon

The concert began with Seven Decisions of Gandhi (2020) by William Harvey (1982) featuring the composer on violin. This performance was the West Coast World Premiere of this most interesting work. Harvey read and was influenced by Ramachandra’s two books on Gandhi’s life and was inspired to compose this work.

On June 28, 2020, Harvey wrote: “After a month of very hard work, I am thrilled to present to the world the concerto I just composed for violin and orchestra. It takes as its premise that we are defined by our decisions.” The “month of very hard work” was worth every minute, a solid composition and performance. They’re a nicely diverse selection, with well-balanced sound between orchestra and soloist throughout, performing crisp, lustrous sound collaboration that, like the Chameleon, permeated and absorbed the seven parts:

I. S.S. Clyde to London

II. Selling the Violin

III. Phoenix

IV. Hartel

V. Khadi

VI. Chauri

VII. Salt March.

The pacing was perfect. Stewart and the orchestra richly detailed Harvey’s musical language with compassion. As an added surprise feature, Jim Santi Owen provided an artistic role on tabla. The second movement offered up a taste of Middle Eastern flavor implementing large Almglocken, metal percussion, and rhythmic pizzicato. Part III offered a well-orchestrated minor chord and set a tranquil mood as the table wove its way through the orchestral texture.

Part IV demonstrated Harvey’s skill as a composer. Upbeat orchestral moments, with virtuoso solo violin, effective brass writing provided a creative sound backdrop for the violin/harp. This section offered subdued, drifting moments of attractive orchestral color. VI and VII provided an impressive show of rhythm, creativity, virtuosity, and orchestral understanding with an ending that faded into the atmosphere.

Soloists Harvey and Owen performed an encore duet of an Afghan song, creative and delightfully performed in every possible way.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s 1803 Symphony No. 3 in Eb, Op. 55 (Eroica) marked the turning point in his artistic output. With the Eroica, Beethoven raised the symphony to an unprecedented level of expression and grandness of musical conception. Compositional elements such as its daring length, range, and emotional commitment marked something of a new beginning in the development of symphonic structure and prompted endless discussions among critics about what it all meant. Following the symphony’s first performances, several critics regarded the work as “a dangerously immoral composition and a daring wild fantasia of inordinate length and extreme difficulty of execution.” Today, it is considered the finest symphony of the historical period! The second movement played an important role during the procession carrying the Queen’s coffin from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall where she lay in state.

Stewart approached the work with a great affection, offering up music of urgency and emotion, to be sure, but also of resplendent love, stately nuances, and sublime musical caresses by the orchestra. It was the kind of performance that was hard for one not to find appealing in all respects. The opening chordal strokes that introduced us to Beethoven's vision were razor-sharp, well-balanced, and precise. With many conductors, at times the notes sound sharp and concise; with Stewart, they sounded strong, full, but mellower, more resigned. It's as though the conductor wanted us to know at the outset that this is going to be a more benign, more humane, artistic interpretation than you've probably heard before.

Of special impressive note was the historic move by the cellos in measure 7, when C# appeared and resolved to D, marked by dramatic emphasis by the orchestra. The question-answer fughetta section began in measure 236 and carried through its ingenious dissonant culmination of extraordinary intensity in measure 280. Beethoven’s use of the hemiola that entered in measure 449 of the first movement by the flutes, oboes, and clarinet was extensive and carried melodically by the use of the amphibrach rhythmic organization (weak – strong – weak).

The second-movement funeral march (Marcia funebre) is designated Adagio assai (very slowly) and alludes to somber introspection. Rather than bring out only the stateliness of the music, Stewart chose to bring out the inner beauty of this movement. His interpretation and time of the well-known Marcia funebre. Adagio assai fit perfectly into many performances by well-known conductors. Chronologically: Paavo Jarvi 13:03, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen; Sir Simon Rattle 15:10, the Vienna; Bernard Haitink, 15:15, Concertgebouw Orchestra; Gustavo Dudamel 16:13, the Simon Bolivar Orchestra; and Ricardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra 18:11. Sunday’s performance at the Mello, Maestro Danny Stewart chose the time of 16:27.

Of course each performance will be uniquely altered in time. But Stewart’s choice of tempo allowed him to paint with a more varied orchestral palette—when desired, developing a darker, more forlorn atmosphere. Scrupulous attention to dynamics and articulation appeared here as well, as did the fastidious care taken in clarifying Beethoven’s contrapuntal textures.

The oboe part in measures 8 through 16 were performed with palpable emotional commitment. Winds, brass, timpani, and harp were simply fabulous throughout! The fragmentation of the theme at the end was masterfully handled, the last bars deeply touching. The lean and graceful playing heard in the first movement reappeared in the Scherzo, but the brazen coloring of the horns in the trio section was exceptionally thrilling. The final movement responded even more favorably to Stewart’s interpretative stance, each dazzling variation dispatched with a technical finesse and engaging brio that celebrated Beethoven’s brilliance. It was fascinating to hear such a different timbre and weight to the sound. Then we got the driving Finale with a reassuringly triumphant conclusion.

The upbeat tempo of the Coda was delightful and allowed for great clarity (the horns clearly articulated their fabulous lines) and a grandly noble conclusion. In the Finale, Stewart was willing to embrace the unbridled rowdiness of this music, bringing a sense of wild jubilation that left the listener elated. Surely this is what Beethoven intended. Very well realized and accomplished Maestro and Santa Cruz Symphony!

JOSEF SEKON, D.M.A.