ALBANY — The Grammy Award-winning Albany Symphony Orchestra is ushering in March with a classical favorite and modern storytelling. The pair of concerts will take place on March 16 and 17 at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall and feature Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” as well as two modern pieces, “The History of Red” and “Murmurations.”
“I think Vivaldi is one of the most unremittingly attractive composers ever,” said Albany Symphony Music director and conductor David Alan Miller. “All of his pieces just sound wonderful. With ‘The Four Seasons,’ a lot of people love the sound of Baroque music, with its activity, continuity and listenability. ‘The Four Seasons’ is especially celebrated because there is just so much sonic sound-painting.”
Adding to the depth of “The Four Seasons” auditory landscape, Vivaldi composed sonnets that are inscribed over the score. “The Four Seasons” paints vivid scenes describing the warmth of summer, cozy winterscapes, the sound of birds and the tempestuous unease of storms.
“It’s so pictorial and so evocative of nature and community in Vivaldi’s time. I think it’s alluring. … I think that’s a part of why Vivaldi’s music is so loved,” said Miller.
While “The Four Seasons” is one of Vivaldi’s most popular compositions, the Albany Symphony Orchestra is approaching it with a vibrant, unique take by featuring four violin solos that complement it with authentic style.
“It’s going to be a very beautiful concert,” said Miller. “‘The Four Seasons’ is played a lot, everywhere, all the time, but the fact that we have these four young, brilliant virtuosi who are just emerging into their professional lives playing the music in a very authentic way is what makes this version of ‘The Four Seasons’ even more special.”
The four violinists, Ravenna Lipchik, Edson Scheid, Amelia Sie and Shelby Yamin, recently graduated from the Juilliard School’s acclaimed Historical Performance program and will be performing on baroque-style instruments.
“They are wonderful virtuoso violinists, each taking a crack at a different Vivaldi concerto,” said Miller. “It’s fantastic because we’re doing it with early music specialists, who are really showing us how to play these pieces as Vivaldi intended them to be played. … It’s exciting for us to be able to perform this with real experts on those instruments, and having four different views is even more fun and exciting.”
Miller considers himself an “interpreter” of the music. As the compositions have journeyed through various musicians, composers and instruments, it is essential to Miller that authenticity be maintained close to what the original composer would have heard in their era.
“My predilection and my belief as an interpreter of the music is that I want to get as close as possible to an awareness or a presentation that is as close as possible to what the composer intended,” he said. “Understanding that with a 400-year-old composer, we will never understand exactly what he or she may have intended.”
However, through scholarship, study and musical archeology, such as with Juliliard’s Historical Performance program, “one can get very close to how Vivaldi might have heard an idealized version of his piece in his time,” he added.
As Vivaldi’s composition looks at the world through nature, Reena Esmail, one of the featured living composers, looks at the history of the world through the color red. For Esmail, there is a connection to the classical Vivaldi of the past and to her modern work of the present day.
Her work, “The History of Red,” combines her style of Indian and Western influences with poetry and storytelling. The composition was inspired by the poem, also titled “The History of Red,” penned by Chickasaw poet and writer Linda Hogan.
“Red is birth, red is blood, red is war, red is love, and red is all these different things, and Linda Hogan wrote this poem so beautifully,” said Esmail.
The featured vocalist for “The History of Red” is soprano Molly Netter, who guides the audience through the poetic journey of the narrator, who is aware of her current world and the complex history of her ancestors.
”This is a piece that has everything from deeply intimate moments talking about birth and conception, talking about war, to talking about really difficult relationships,” explained Esmail. “I think because it has such a massive expanse, there will be words that are so significant to each person in the huge expanse of this poem. … I just hope everyone can dip into their own experience.”
Esmail has had a long relationship with the Albany Symphony, starting her work with them in 2014. They’ve commissioned three of her works and have the longest working relationship she’s had with an orchestra.
“It’s been amazing,” reflected Esmail on working with ASO. “Because each time I had a piece premiered, I would come back for that. I was also their composer in residence, and I spent a year working in Albany Public Schools and working with those young people. I feel like I know the Albany community really well. … It’s so rare to have such a long working relationship with one orchestra. I’m just really grateful to have that with Albany.”
The program also features Derek Bermel’s composition, “Murmurations.” Murmurations are organized flockings by certain types of birds. Bermel connects the gliding layers of formation to when he listens to and watches a string orchestra perform.
Bermel’s composition was inspired by a year living in Rome, where he often watched starling murmurations and translated his observations into music.
“Bermel’s imaginative harmonic progressions and shifting accent patterns elevate the seemingly simple finale [‘Murmurations’] to a level of sophistication. The individual sections’ swooping scales seamlessly fit together,” noted the San Francisco Classical Voice.
Drawing from nature is the essence of Vivaldi’s work, making Bermel’s composition a seamless transition from past to present for audience members attending the ASO March program. “To me, that [‘Murmurations’] is very close to what Vivaldi is doing in ‘The Four Seasons,’” said Miller.
“I think it’s a gorgeous combination of Derek introducing the idea of nature and music, Reena creating this gorgeous piece about nostalgia and humanity, and Vivaldi ending in a very big second half with these four nature-celebrating concertos. I hope that the three pieces speak to each other and make a wonderfully satisfying musical meal for everybody,” he added.
