{"id":33872,"date":"2016-05-30T12:44:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T18:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=33872"},"modified":"2016-05-30T12:44:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T18:44:43","slug":"sinfonia-salt-lake-a-welcome-addition-to-the-orchestral-music-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/sinfonia-salt-lake-a-welcome-addition-to-the-orchestral-music-scene\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinfonia Salt Lake, a Welcome Addition to the Orchestral Music Scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Musicians-Banner-sm-Faded-blue_drk\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sinfonia Salt Lake, Salt Lake City’s newest professional chamber orchestra, gave its inaugural concert on January 25 and its second on May 16 at the First United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City.\u00a0 There is certainly a place for such an orchestra in the Salt Lake City area’s\u00a0orchestral music scene,\u00a0especially\u00a0from September through June each year.<\/p>\n

While the Utah Symphony at times performs chamber orchestra pieces on its Masterworks Series in Abravanel Hall (the ongoing Franz Joseph Haydn symphony cycle \u2014 Nos. 1-6 \u2014\u00a0under Music Director Thierry Fischer), its Chamber Orchestra Series during its regular season appears to have more or less faded out with the end of the 2008-2009 season (there was something of a revival during the 2014-2015 and the just-ended 2015-2016 seasons, with\u00a0four total performances\u00a0at Park City’s St. Mary’s Church).\u00a0It is true that\u00a0the summer home of the Utah Symphony, the Deer Valley Music Festival, has just expanded its Chamber Orchestra Series (at St. Mary’s) to five concerts, from the three that had existed from\u00a0the Festival’s\u00a0beginnings in 2003 up until this coming summer season. Yet, it appears that\u00a0until the creation and arrival of Sinfonia Salt\u00a0Lake,\u00a0the consistency\u00a0of purely chamber orchestra performances on any sort of regular basis\u00a0in Salt Lake City had begun to\u00a0all but disappear for the immediately foreseeable future.\u00a0 In any case, Sinfonia Salt Lake’s prospective niche\u00a0is both\u00a0independent of these developments and complementary, and is to be greatly welcomed.<\/p>\n

One of the orchestra’s founders is its music director, Robert Baldwin, who has been a key figure on the local orchestral music scene, where for many years\u00a0he has been Director of Orchestral Activities at the University of Utah School of Music and also\u00a0Music Director of the Salt Lake City Symphony, a decades-old community orchestra. Sinfonia Salt Lake\u00a0currently appears to have a complement of eight violins, four violas,\u00a0three cellos, one bass, and one bassoon, with two of the following: oboes, horns, flutes; so approximately 23 players, with some slight fluctuations based on repertoire,\u00a0arrangements of compositions,\u00a0and the orchestra becoming a bit more established.\u00a0 All of these musicians are local professional freelancers.<\/p>\n

Sinfonia Salt Lake’s May concert was held in the historic building where\u00a0the First United Methodist Church resides.\u00a0 The1905 building designed by architect Frederick Albert Hale provides richly and roundly resonant acoustics, with more than a modicum of clarity, and is superb for the sounds that a small chamber orchestra creates.\u00a0 There is orchestral level seating (the stage is raised)\u00a0and balcony seating that curve around the small stage, with the dome at the top and center of the building visible as it rises upwards in the interior.\u00a0\u00a0The concert consisted of four compositions spanning three centuries, was warmly engaging and thoroughly convincing on the terms it had laid out, with a title of “Inspired by\u00a0Royalty” \u2014 all the compositions were either composed for actual royalty or in some fashion inspired by royalty<\/p>\n

English composer Henry Purcell’s 1680 string orchestra piece\u00a0Chacony<\/em>\u00a0(about 6-7 minutes in length) in G minor came first, in a sonorous performance and interpretation.\u00a0 The piece is part of Purcell\u2019s \u201cKing Arthur\u201d and Sinfonia Salt Lake emitted a smoothly velvet sound, cushioned and resonant, with lushly balanced colors.<\/p>\n

George Frideric Handel’s ebullient Suite No. 1 in F major (about 25 minutes)\u00a0from his\u00a0orchestral work Water Music<\/em>\u00a0followed, in a thoroughly infectious but richly realized interpretation, deeply felt but never overdone or maudlin.\u00a0\u00a0With Sinfonia Salt Lake’s complement for this piece of two horns, two oboes, and one bassoon, plus four first violins, four second violins, three cellos, three violas, and one bass, clarity was uppermost, but conductor Robert Baldwin ensured balances were sleek and appropriately tight.\u00a0 Clean and lightly glowing textures added to a performance with a great deal of heart, with an Andante<\/em>\u00a0engaged with a stately pulse and a Minuet<\/em> graced with a finely found and fondly remembered lyricism.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Water Music<\/em> was composed for King George I and\u00a0premiered on July 17, 1717, by musicians on a barge on the River Thames accompanying the royal barge.\u00a0 Along with\u00a0Music for the Royal Fireworks<\/em>, it is more than likely Handel’s most famous and popular purely orchestral music, so this selection in and of itself for this concert did not exactly expose a less-well-known composition to the local orchestral concert-going public, one of Sinfonia Salt Lake’s hinted-at founding goals.\u00a0 But that is a rather pointless argument.\u00a0 Sinfonia Salt Lake must program some greatest hits of the chamber orchestra repertoire to bring in and maintain an audience, as well as to assess and enhance\u00a0its ensemble unity and range of artistry.<\/p>\n

Twentieth-century English composer William Walton’s warmly solemn\u00a0Passacaglia<\/em>:\u00a0The Death of Falstaff is an excerpt of about\u00a03-4 minutes from Walton’s much longer score for the 1944 film\u00a0Henry V<\/em>\u00a0that starred Laurence Olivier.\u00a0 This strings-only piece began the second half on a rather somber and deeply pensive note,\u00a0surely reflecting some of the heroic and yet-to-emerge optimism\u00a0amid a swell of destruction invested in tenuous times that was the Second World War.\u00a0 Finely delineated textures, artful and deeply felt, arched through this performance.<\/p>\n

Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 45 in F sharp minor “Farewell” ended the concert in compelling style and with feeling.\u00a0 Haydn (1732-1809) wrote this composition (it lasts about 25 minutes) for his patron Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy, and it is one of his so-called “middle period” symphonies (in four movements)\u00a0that helped solidify his expanding reputation as an almost unrivaled composer of entertaining and captivating symphonies.<\/p>\n

Sinfonia Salt Lake had it all for this performance.\u00a0 The dashing, floating lines of the first movement, an\u00a0Allegro assai<\/em>, captured the undercurrent of vivacious pathos in this movement, with a swirling sweep to the textures.\u00a0 The second movement, a lucid,\u00a0almost airy\u00a0Adagio<\/em>, was given a stately yet flexible line, and colorful phrasing, expansive yet clean.\u00a0 The third movement, an elegantly playful and joyous Menuetto:\u00a0 Allegretto<\/em>, received gently bracing balances and ever alert but never overbearing phrasing.\u00a0 Finally, we arrived at\u00a0the\u00a0jettisoning verve of the\u00a0Finale:\u00a0\u00a0Presto\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0\u00a0Adagio<\/em>, where the musicians, slowly, over the course of the movement, as individuals, pairs \u2014 and even trios \u2014 are directed to leave the stage (in this case they walked down the stairs on either side of the stage into the audience seating).\u00a0 Impulsively attentive\u00a0textures arrayed with\u00a0colorful bouquets of instrumental timbres ended with the concertmaster, Leslie Henrie, the principal viola, Leslie Richards, and the conductor, Robert Baldwin, being the last musicians performing.<\/p>\n

For the upcoming 2016-2017 season, its first full season,\u00a0Sinfonia Salt Lake has scheduled six regular-season\u00a0concerts.\u00a0 The second one of the upcoming season, in October, subtitled “Towards the Dark Side,”\u00a0looks to be especially interesting, with a trio of works including Bernard Hermann’s Suite from the 1960 film\u00a0Psycho<\/em>, Luigi Boccherini’s Symphony No. 6 in D minor “La Casa del diavolo,” and Gustav Mahler’s\u00a0arrangement\/transcription for string orchestra of Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 “Death and the Maiden.”\u00a0 There will be a world premiere by local composer and music critic Ed Reichel in January 2017, along with a piece \u2014\u00a0Spirituals for Strings<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 by mid-20th century American composer and conductor Morton Gould.\u00a0 An enticing program in May 2017\u00a0will feature the three Mozarts: \u00a0Leopold, Wolfgang, and Franz Xavier (father, son, and grandson), guest conducted by former Utah Symphony Associate Concertmaster and conductor Gerald Elias.<\/p>\n

Sinfonia Salt Lake’s founding statement includes the following:”Committed to offering engaging music rarely heard at traditional symphony concerts, we offer an eclectic repertoire of music from the Baroque era through the present day shared in intimate concert venues.”\u00a0 It certainly appears that there will be an ardent effort to uphold this promise, and\u00a0other historic concert venues appear to be under consideration.\u00a0 So expectations have been set for some truly adventurous programming and what should be compelling performances, as the first two concerts of Sinfonia Salt Lake point the\u00a0array of\u00a0exciting outcomes\u00a0in a sure direction.\u00a0 Sinfonia Salt Lake deserves the attendance and support of any local concertgoer at all interested in orchestral music.\u00a0 May it last for many seasons to come.<\/p>\n

\u00a0You can learn more about the group at http:\/\/www.sinfoniasaltlake.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sinfonia Salt Lake, Salt Lake City’s newest professional chamber orchestra, gave its inaugural concert on January 25 and its second on May 16 at the First United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City.\u00a0 There is certainly a place for such an orchestra in the Salt Lake City area’s\u00a0orchestral […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1519,"featured_media":33873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[2925],"class_list":["post-33872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-sinfonia-salt-lake"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Musicians-Banner-sm-Faded-blue_drk.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-03 14:38:01","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\/33872","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=33872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33874,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33872\/revisions\/33874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}