August 16, 2022

Our season at Chautauqua wrapped up with our final concert last night. Our conducting fellow Yeo-Ryeung Ahn led the orchestra in a wonderful reading of Carlos Simon’s “Tales: A Folklore Symphony”. This is a powerful and very appealing work that I have a feeling will be showing up on symphony seasons across the country regularly in coming years. I know it will be on one of  mine sometime soon.
 
I had the immense privilege to join the orchestra in Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, a work that turned out to be probably the best possible piece for the moment. This has been a hard summer. Of concern throughout the season was keeping Covid at bay. Hearing of so many festivals cancelling performances and even sending musicians home to prevent further spread kept us on edge for the 8 weeks of our program. Miraculously, we made it through and played the final program with all but one musician.
 
The real challenge came last Friday however, with the unthinkable and senseless attack on Salman Rushdie on our stage. This plunged the entire institution into a dark place the likes of which I had never seen first hand.  Through mutual support, openness, honesty, empathy and a belief in the power of art, we dug ourselves out of that emotional hole enough to find a way to reclaim a place marked by violence as a place for the sharing of art. As one might imagine, it was a powerful and emotional evening.
 
Prokofiev wrote his Fifth Symphony in 1944, during another dark time for humanity world wide. Somehow, amidst all that tragedy, he found inspiration to pen this work that is, at it’s core, one of optimism, beauty and a celebration of the human spirit…as I mentioned, a most fitting work for the occasion.
 
Our thoughts are with Mr. Rushdie, his colleague Ralph Henry Reese and their friends and families as they recover. We are certainly not over the shock and pain of tragedy, but we have taken significant and important steps towards the healing process. I am, and will be forever, grateful for my colleagues at the Chautauqua Institution and the members of our orchestra for the support and inspiration they showed each other and the community and as we tried to find our way forward.
 
That way forward for me musically will be heading back to Lansing for a free outdoor park concert with some of classical music’s greatest hits on August 26th. It will be wonderful to take the stage again with my LSO colleagues and share this exciting program.

From there I’ll head to  Baton Rouge for a concert with Emanuel Ax and the BRSO. He will be playing Brahms First Piano Concerto and Mozart’s K. 456. I look forward to sharing the stage again with my colleagues there and Mr. Ax.
 
NEXT UP:
 
BATON ROUGE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Emanuel Ax, piano
River Center Theater for the Performing Arts
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
September 15, 2022
 
MOZART   The Marriage of Figaro Overture
MOZART   Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat, K 456 (Paradis)
BRAHMS   Piano Concerto No. 1