{"id":28416,"date":"2015-03-22T23:29:57","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T05:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=28416"},"modified":"2020-07-28T18:31:42","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T00:31:42","slug":"salt-lake-symphony-performs-fire-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/salt-lake-symphony-performs-fire-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Salt Lake Symphony Performs “Fire & Ice”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"fireicelg\"<\/a>

Jean Sibelius, Igor Stravinsky and Ralph Vaughan Williams<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The title promoted for the most recent Salt Lake City Symphony concert was “Fire & Ice!” \u00a0The program: works by Jean Sibelius, Igor Stravinsky, and Ralph Vaughan Williams \u2014 a Finn, a Russian, and an Englishman. All the works were conducted by Robert Baldwin, an American. In the end, the fire was beholden to the luminous and transcendent ice.<\/p>\n

The music of composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) is often associated with cold and cool orchestral textures and colors, although in this case the orchestra performed\u00a0Finlandia<\/i>, a symphonic poem that is romantic and starkly nationalistic \u2014 it was written for an 1899 covert protest against censorship from the Russian Empire.\u00a0 It was premiered on July 2, 1900 in Helsinki.\u00a0Indeed, most historians consider it to be one of his signature pieces, although it is not necessarily representative of his later work.<\/p>\n

The music the Russian Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) wrote for the ballet The Firebird<\/i> is resplendent, with warm textures, but it is also in its own way nationalistic and romantic, based as it is on fragments of reconfigured Russian fairy tales.\u00a0In this instance the orchestra performed the 1919 Suite, which is less than half the length of the music for the full ballet, with a less Wagnerian-size orchestra. The premiere of the original full-length score took place on June 25, 1910.<\/p>\n

English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 7\u00a0Sinfonia antartica<\/i>\u00a0more than solidified the ice portion of the concert’s programmatic equation. Its symphonic style is firmly romantic yet obviously more modern-sounding, and it too has nationalistic overtones, partially composed as it was for a film depiction of an intrepid British explorer’s encounter with nature at its most grand and inhospitable.\u00a0But this symphony moves far beyond that, to become one of the best and most enveloping orchestral landscapes ever painted in any genre.<\/p>\n

Finlandia<\/i>,\u00a0with its surges of loud and soft dynamics — sometimes considered to be on the verge of bombast — and exposed brass parts, can be difficult to finesse, but music director and conductor Robert Baldwin, the Salt Lake Symphony, and twenty-three side-by-side high-school musicians, came close to the mark. The brass were somewhat tame at the start, but the strings were warmly fulsome and the bass lines distinct.\u00a0The second major theme — the\u00a0Finlandia<\/i>\u00a0hymn — was a bit reticent when it first appeared, but colors were pellucid and the performance gained from not attempting to overplay this well-known melody. So overall, the performance was perhaps a little lacking in declamatory fire, but this allowed a more distinctive and even soothing interpretation to emerge.<\/p>\n

Igor Stravinsky wrote the music for the ballet\u00a0The Firebird\u00a0<\/i>in 1911. The 1919 Suite essentially has four sections or movements.\u00a0In the Introduction Baldwin adopted a flowing tempo, with precise playing by the basses, and bassoons that were brusque and pliable.\u00a0Ring Dances of the Princesses emerged with a plush yet fleet pace, but was a little unsettled and sleepy.\u00a0The Infernal Dance of King Kashchey was crisp and bracing; the transitions to softer moments were more deftly handled.\u00a0As for the Lullaby and Finale, the lyrical and harmonic lines had a sinuous focus, and there was a delicately piquant oboe, complemented by bassoon playing of poise and limpid color. The Finale was fiercely brazen. So a convincing Firebird<\/i>, but nothing momentous.<\/p>\n

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was one of the major English composers of the last century, and one of the the most prominent composers of the twentieth-century.\u00a0His nine symphonies (Symphony No. 1 was premiered in 1910, No. 9 was first performed in 1958) have moved in and out of fashion, but at least a few of them should be included in the standard symphonic repertoire.\u00a0However, that has yet to take place, at least in the United States.\u00a0 Symphony No. 2 A London Symphony<\/i>\u00a0and Symphony No. 5 are the most frequently performed, and closest to being in the canon. Symphony No. 7\u00a0Sinfonia antartica<\/i>\u00a0(an Italian spelling) is rarely performed — but we might ask why?<\/p>\n

The music is certainly atmospheric, visceral, and creatively orchestrated, but perhaps its practical (but not necessarily conceptual) origin in film music has played some role in its rarity. Another reason for its infrequent appearances on concert programs:\u00a0the large array of forces required. The music derives from what Vaughan Williams wrote for the film “Scott of Antarctica,” which was released in 1949.\u00a0This film depicts Englishman Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition (1910-1912) to the South Pole, in which he and others perished in the icy vastness in late March 1912 from starvation, exhaustion, and extreme cold.\u00a0 Scott was a Royal Navy officer.<\/p>\n

Symphony No. 7 was first performed on January 14, 1953, and is in five movements.\u00a0A crucial and substantial organ part appears in the third movement, and a wordless soprano soloist and sixteen-voice three-part women’s chorus appear in the the first and last movements. In this performance, the optional literary quotation for the start of each movement was omitted. This replicated the premiere of the symphony, which did not include the brief quotations, which were inserted later; evidently they were never required to be part of a performance.<\/p>\n

Music director and conductor Robert Baldwin sculpted and shaped the symphony with confidence and care.\u00a0The interpretation emphasized the architecture of the work, but never at the expense of detail and phrasing.<\/p>\n

The first movement is titled Prelude — Andante Maestoso. It was superbly choreographed, with the wind machine and wordless female chorus (from the University of Utah) tellingly unified. The soprano soloist was Emily Nelson, a doctoral student at the University of Utah School of Music. Here voice is superb for this small but crucial role that signifies the beauty in the vastness of the Antarctic landmass. The second movement is a scherzo, and is marked Moderato.\u00a0It was propulsive from the start, with the brass, especially the trumpets, on fine form. The percussion section created a cloud of textures. There was something close to a transcendental moment: the projection of cymbal, bassoon, tuba, and unison strings in the closing measures.<\/p>\n

The third movement is titled Landscape — Lento, and is the heart of the symphony.\u00a0A sense of implacability hovered over it — as it should. All of the organ entries (played by Ken Udy) were finely mixed, balanced, and most convincing, with excellent ensemble unity in forte<\/i> passages. The organ created a truly awe-inspiring sonority, and the concluding uptempo section generated a pulsing sense of limitless space.<\/p>\n

There was no pause between the third movement and the fourth, which is an intermezzo and is marked Andante sostenuto.\u00a0Here we heard a sublimated gleam to the strings, with the otherworldly atmosphere caught from the first bars.\u00a0 Trombone entrances were suitably implacable and blinding.\u00a0The final movement is titled Epilogue: Alla marcia, moderato.\u00a0A sense of symphonic architecture reigned, with telling details — such as the machine-gun like interjections of the snare drum during the wordless chorus, joined with the wind machine.\u00a0The sounds of the wind machine were exceedingly realistic, and folded into such a soft ending, but one that was so atmospheric and so emotionally intoxicating in its bleakness.<\/p>\n

This performance of Sinfonia antartica<\/i>\u00a0by the Salt Lake Symphony <\/a>was most illuminating, and, according to this reviewer, one of the candidates for best symphonic performance of the year so far.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Fire & Ice”
\nSalt Lake Symphony
\nLibby Gardner Concert Hall
\nMarch 21, 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title promoted for the most recent Salt Lake City Symphony concert was “Fire & Ice!” The program: works by Jean Sibelius, Igor Stravinsky, and Ralph Vaughan Williams — a Finn, a Russian, and an Englishman. All the works were conducted by Robert Baldwin, an American. In the end, the fire was beholden to the luminous and transcendent ice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1519,"featured_media":28435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-28 21:28:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1519"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28416"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54344,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28416\/revisions\/54344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}