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By Mack Richardson
CCSO President & CEO
As
everyone realizes, any
symphony orchestra's
concert season is full of
interesting personalities, from the
Music Director and the individual
musicians to the guest artists who
bring their awesome talents for
all to hear. That being said, the
most fascinating characters may
be those who are present only in
spirit and sound -the composers.
Usually we have a pretty good
mental picture of these men and
women, at least if they are famil-
iar to us. And even if they are not ,
well, we tend to suppose that they
are pretty much like the ones we
know. Join me now as we get a
bit off the beaten path of what we
already know about the compos-
ers "appearing" on the Nov. 4-5
concert s, and look at some fasci-
nating sidelights.
Felix Mendelssohn has an
indirect tie to the September
concert also. Sir Edward Elgar's
1899 "Enigma" Variations was
his break-out work, indeed the
first break-out work of an Eng-
lish composer since the 1600s.
George Frideric Handel, Franz
Josef Haydn, Felix Mendelssohn
and Karl Maria von Weber (of
the September concert's piece
by Paul Hindemith) were only
the most prominent of the Con-
tinental composers who came to
England and stifled the native son
composers; it was Queen Victoria
who said she wanted all her "com-
posers to sound like Mr. Mendels-
sohn," and they did, or tried to,
and all they became was deriva-
tive, not distinctive. Sir Edward
hit the mark though. Even then ,
he borrowed a famous melody
from a Mendelssohn overture
to use at an appropriate point
in the "Enigma"
Variations! (Dear
old Queen Victo-
ria lived until 1901,
after all.)
We have referred
to Mendelssohn
and the great
French composer
Camille Saint-Saens
as "two Mozart ean
composers." By this we mean
that after Mozart , these two were
the next composers (chrono-
logically) of whom it can be said
that their innate gifts transcend
anything which can be explained
in normal terms.
Mendelssohn (he lived for only
38 years compared to Mozart 's
nearly 36) came from a very
prominent family: his grandfather
was the esteemed Jewish philoso-
pher Moses Mendelssohn, and
his father Abraham was the head
of a major Berlin banking firm.
His mother Lea was an excellent
pianist, and organized the educa-
tional grounding of Felix and his
sister Fanny (also a gifted pianist
and composer) in literature, lan-
guages, art and music. They lived
in a palace on a large estate.
Felix was nonetheless modest
and amiable, and by his teens
was a polished dancer, a master
of chess and billiards, an expert
horseback rider and swimmer, a
watercolorist and writer. None of
these, however, compared with
his gift for music, his composing
enhanced by hired orchestras
to "try out" his compositions
and his mastery of the piano.
He played the violin well and
the organ brilliantly, and was
to become the most important
conductor in Europe. Not only
was he spectacularly gifted , but
he wrote great music early in
life. His "Octet for Strings" was
written when he was 16 and the
famous Overture for "A Midsum-
mer Night's Dream" when he was
17. Not even Mozart wrote music
of such maturity by that age.
Saint-Saens (1835-1921; he
was not to be short-lived) was
an astonishing prodigy. At 2 1/2 ,
he was picking out tunes on
the piano; by 4, he composed
his first piece; at 5. he made his
professional debut as a pianist.
The precocious child was also
gifted in mathematics, science
and languages. At the age of 11
he performed on one concert
Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 15,
Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.
3 and a formidable group of
solo works. At 15 he entered
the Paris Conservatory,
where he claimed prize after
prize and had his first
symphony publicly per-
formed at age 20. At age
22, he became organist
at the famed Madeleine
Church in Paris. Franz
Liszt said his playing was not
only front rank, but "incompa-
rable, even to a full orchestra."
His "Organ" Symphony (1886),
which we will play in April 2007,
was dedicated to the recently
deceased Liszt. He edited all
of Mozart's piano sonatas for
publication , and played all 27 of
Mozart's piano concertos in one
tour. He wrote learned papers in
physics, astronomy, and archaeol-
ogy, became fluent in one lan-
guage after another, drew carica-
tures, wrote plays, and authored
books on painting, aesthetics,
criticism and philosophy. In 1908
he composed history's first music
for a film, L'assassinat du Due de
Guise. Take that, John Williams!
He died in Algiers at age 86, on a
concert tour, no less.
The Bohemian composer An-
tonin Dvorak came from more
humble beginnings: the oldest of
eight children, his father was an
innkeeper and the village butcher.
His gifts were not recognized until
he was 14, and only then because
he had moved to another town
to five with his uncle. It was only
by a teacher's intervention that
money was found to send him to
the Prague Conservatory at age
16. From there he was employed
as a violist in a local orchestra
until he was 30 years old, even
though composing was his secret
passion. By then the spark of
Bohemian and Czech nationalism
was growing, and this inspiration
led him to give up the orchestra
job and move to Prague. Shortly
afterwards, he met Johannes
Brahms, and the rest is history.
Brahms gave Dvorak a lot of
encouragement and more im-
portantly recommended him to
Brahms' own publisher, and soon
Dvorak's 16 "Slavonic Dances"
became best-sellers (you can hear
No. 8 on the November concert).
Today he remains one of the
world's most beloved composers
with works like the "New World"
Symphony which he wrote in Iowa
in 1893. You can also trace a direct
line from him to important Ameri-
can musicians like Aaron Copland
and Duke Ellington, and while in
the U.S. he proposed that African-
American music would form the
basis of a "national" music for us,
which it did: ragtime, jazz, blues
and rock.
If possible, we will look at other
CCSO composers of 2006-07 in
future articles. In the meantime,
we are sure that many of you are
interested in the process by which
a successor to Music Director
Royston Nash will be chosen. A
Search Committee comprised of
CCSO Board members, musicians,
and staff as well as community
representatives has been working
since this summer, sifting through
resumes and recommendations
of possible candidates. We will be
bringing several of the most highly
qualified to the Cape this Fall
and early Winter for interviews, a
rehearsal with the Orchestra , and
a visit to a school since Education
Programs are a major part of the
CCSO's annual activities. From
these few, we will select three or
four to come back during the 2007-
2008 concert season to conduct
Classical and Pops concerts, and to
do additional work in Education.
Naturally then, you, the public, will
have the chance to see and hear
these Maestro-Candidates in con-
cert and participate in the search
process. We will want to hear your
opinions! It is our plan that the
new Maestro or Maestra will be in-
troduced in the spring of 2008 and
conduct the final CCSO concert
that season in May or June.
To reserve concert tickets, call 508-362-1111,
ext. 100, or go to www.capesymphony.org
A fascinating cast of characters for
Cape Cod Symphony's 2006-07 Season
Twisters touch down at Cotuit arts center
Artist 's whirling tor-
nadoes speak to tur-
bulent times
By Britt Beedenbender
arts@barnstablepatnot com
WORLD IN A WHIRL - Kulvinder Kaur Dhew 's "Velocity Series: Tempest" is part ot
an exhibition at Cotuit Center for the Arts.
In
a departure from her color-
ful and at times abstract cre-
ations, British artist Kulvinder
Kaur Dhew has journeyed into
the realm of black and white in a
series of 24 charcoal drawings on
view in the exhibition "Tempest"
at the Cotuit Center for the Arts.
Created over the past eight
months from a pastiche of images
collected from her visual memory
and photographs , this exhibition
offers a refreshing perspective
on nature that simultaneously
entices and terrifies. Dhew's draw-
ings invite contemplation , not the
passive kind that is invoked by a
twilight marsh scene but instead
one that actively engages and
confronts the viewer.
These energized compositions
call upon the elemental forces of
nature, occurring were wind and
earth meet. At the point of con-
nection a churning maelstrom is
sparked resulting in swirling winds
whose velocity creates a vortex
capable of unrelenting destruction.
Through studying the atmospheric
qualities of storms in an almost
"snap-shot like" fashion, Dhew
creates vibrant metaphors for "the
human condition" and "the turbu-
lent times in which we live."
As she writes, "It is the terrible
beauty of the storm," that duality
between seduction and destruc-
tion, that appeals to Dhew. "They
become traces of my reactions to
the times we live in...and while
they are emotional they are very
conceptual ."
Her tornadoes , in part , "repre-
sent the whirling dervishes ," the
initiates of Sufism , a mystical
branch of Islam, who whirl for
days and believe that the beauty
of God can be seen within the
dynamics of nature.
"In order for me to make art.it
has to be profound ," Dhew writes.
"It is almost a spiritual endeav-
or." In this way, her works recall
the sublime romanticism of the
eighteenth century artists William
Blake and Francisco Goya.
In addition to her drawings
of gathering clouds and storms.
Dhew also examines the dynamics
of storm-tossed seas. Unlike her
twisters, these works do not wield
the same visual impact or have
the same compositional complex-
ity as her "intellectual collisions
of haven and sensuous earth." Her
subtleties of line and color grada-
tions within the charcoal medium
are most fully appreciated in her
Velocity Series and Anatomy of a
Tornado.
Born in England to Indian par-
ents, and now a resident of New
Jersey, Dhew received her M.A. in
painting from the Royal College of
Art in London. Since graduating
she has been the Head of Painting
at the School of Art in Dunedin,
New Zealand and taught at the
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak in
Borneo. Her work is exhibited
internationally and is included in
many private and public collec-
tions.
"Tempest" runs through tomorrow at Cotuit
Center for the Arts on Route 28. For informa-
tion, call 508-428-0669.
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