two community orchestra concerts
May. 18th, 2025 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI attended two concerts by community orchestras, non-professional groups, in San Jose this weekend. They don't aspire to professional levels of playing ability, but they can be fun to attend.
The South Bay Philharmonic, conducted by George Yefchak, is the group for which B. is a viola player. They featured Tchaikovsky's Second Symphony, a rough but thoroughly enjoyable performance which conveyed Tchaikovsky's lyricism and his varying senses of excitement, coyness, and reflection. Chosen because of the composer's use of a Ukrainian folk song as the theme for the finale.
Also on the program, the Oboe Concerto by Bohuslav Martinů, a jaggedly modernist piece featuring prominent piano doublings in the orchestral chords, giving them the crunchy sound I associate with this composer. Pamela Hakl, retired from Symphony San Jose, was the impressively skilled oboeist. Plus a brief Nocturne for strings by an early 20C Ukrainian composer, Fyodor Akimenko, played almost unintelligibly, and a rather crisp and lively arrangement by Ted Ricketts of some songs from Wicked (Stephen Schwartz, prop.).
The Winchester Orchestra, conducted by James Beauton, featured Copland's Billy the Kid and once again, Tchaikovsky, the 1812 Overture. A brave thing for a small community orchestra to undertake, with tubular bells substituting for the carillon, sort of half-heartedly, and a few mighty thwaps on the bass drum for the cannon. But just about everyone plowed in enthusiastically.
Also two darker-toned brief pieces, Barber's Essay No. 1 and a fairly new piece called Something for the Dark by Sarah Kirkland Snider. The Snider was big on curled-up crescendos and rhythmic figures both simple and complex, less so on melody or harmony, especially ending as it did in the middle of the air.
Winchester is supposed to be a more advanced orchestra than South Bay, but the sound of the cellos being altogether untogether in one of Tchaikovsky's hymn passages, or of half the winds coming in a bar early at one point in the Copland, made me wonder.
Still, both were good shows and I'm glad I went. The more so as it'll be two busy weeks before I get to another concert.
The South Bay Philharmonic, conducted by George Yefchak, is the group for which B. is a viola player. They featured Tchaikovsky's Second Symphony, a rough but thoroughly enjoyable performance which conveyed Tchaikovsky's lyricism and his varying senses of excitement, coyness, and reflection. Chosen because of the composer's use of a Ukrainian folk song as the theme for the finale.
Also on the program, the Oboe Concerto by Bohuslav Martinů, a jaggedly modernist piece featuring prominent piano doublings in the orchestral chords, giving them the crunchy sound I associate with this composer. Pamela Hakl, retired from Symphony San Jose, was the impressively skilled oboeist. Plus a brief Nocturne for strings by an early 20C Ukrainian composer, Fyodor Akimenko, played almost unintelligibly, and a rather crisp and lively arrangement by Ted Ricketts of some songs from Wicked (Stephen Schwartz, prop.).
The Winchester Orchestra, conducted by James Beauton, featured Copland's Billy the Kid and once again, Tchaikovsky, the 1812 Overture. A brave thing for a small community orchestra to undertake, with tubular bells substituting for the carillon, sort of half-heartedly, and a few mighty thwaps on the bass drum for the cannon. But just about everyone plowed in enthusiastically.
Also two darker-toned brief pieces, Barber's Essay No. 1 and a fairly new piece called Something for the Dark by Sarah Kirkland Snider. The Snider was big on curled-up crescendos and rhythmic figures both simple and complex, less so on melody or harmony, especially ending as it did in the middle of the air.
Winchester is supposed to be a more advanced orchestra than South Bay, but the sound of the cellos being altogether untogether in one of Tchaikovsky's hymn passages, or of half the winds coming in a bar early at one point in the Copland, made me wonder.
Still, both were good shows and I'm glad I went. The more so as it'll be two busy weeks before I get to another concert.
