
“The Force of Love” proved to be the perfect title for the Metropolitan Youth Symphony’s season-opening concert November 10 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. The young musicians, guided by Music Director Raúl Gómez-Rojas, painted lively sonic canvases that told stories of passion, desire, and loss. he program featured works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and contemporary American composer Missy Mazzoli, as well as the world premiere of a piece by Elishiya Crain-Keddie. Each piece aptly fit within the overarching theme of the orchestra’s 50th anniversary season, “Breaking Barriers.”
One of the coolest things about the MYS is its willingness to play the music of a composer who is basically the same age as the musicians on stage. Elishiya Crain-Keddie, a senior at the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics, has studied composition for the past three years with Fear No Music’s Young Composers Program. Her String Quartet in G Minor won first place in the Washington State Music Teachers Association state competition, and her music has been played by the Oregon Symphony, MYS, the New York City-based contemporary ensemble Bang on A Can, and an ensemble of students at the Julliard School of Music. Wow!
Crain-Keddie’s piece, Innamorata, explored the emotion of falling in love, realizing that the person you fall in love with will not return that love, the ensuing panic, lament, delirium, and acceptance of reality. The piece began with a light-hearted melody, but shifted in another direction, drifting into dissonance, agitation, and turbulence. A struggle between themes in major and minor keys emerged and finally subsided with sounds that resolved and unified. Crain-Keddie used the palette of the entire orchestra effectively to convey the storyline, including a poignant solo for the oboe. It was great to see the young composer come to center stage to accept the loud applause from the audience.
Another piece on the subject of love was Orpheus Undone, by Missy Mazzoli. Commissioned by the Chicago Symphony in 2020, Mazzoli’s piece has a modern take on the ancient myth in which Orpheus failed in his attempt to bring Eurydice out of the Underworld. The piece is split into two connected movements, “Behold the Machine, O Death” and “We of Violence, We Endure,” which are titles taken from Rainier Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus.
Composer Missy Mazzoli talks about her work “Orpheus Undone” on the MYS program.
According to Mazzoli’s program notes, Orpheus Undone “explores the baffling and surreal stretching of time in moments of trauma or agony.” She accomplished that vision through complex rhythms and a sophisticated mesh of tones, all of which the MYS, under Gómez-Rojas, conquered with panache. An array of glissandos, dissonant chords, and tremolos generated the sense of fear and dread that was set against a persistent tic-tock from the percussion battery – giving the impression of time passing by, and an impending sense of urgency. Sequences that involved chaotic bowing from the strings created a surrealist blur. Also impressive were passages from the piano that sounded like the bones of skeletons. A massive orchestral crescendo and pounding on a big bass drum signaled the conclusion, which slowly dissolved to a single tone before completely dissipating. All in all, there was so much going on that I would have enjoyed hearing it again.
Beethoven wrote only one opera, Fidelio, which tells the story of Leonore, who heroically rescues her husband from a prison where he has been unjustly held. Because Beethoven reworked the overture to his opera, it has three versions. The Leonore Overture No. 3 received an incisive performance with excellent dynamics and superb solos from the flutes and off-stage trumpet.
The MYS also gave an impressive performance of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy. The woodwinds set the stage with an atmosphere of tragedy. The strings executed exciting accelerandos into the feud theme that vividly depicted the Montagues and Capulets fighting with swords – evoked with sharp interjections from the brass. In contrast, Juliet’s theme had a lovely, lilting quality, and the final funeral march was executed with a sad solemnity.
The concert began with a couple of pieces from the Concert Orchestra, which was led by Giancarlo Castro D’Addona. The ensemble captured the whimsical spirit of the Overture to Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro and followed with two light-footed selections from Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances.
Conversation