Return of the Huey's! (Number three)

During the late spring/summer of 2011, I wrote:

The "Huey awards" are totally arbitrary, based upon my own criteria which include possible thematic content, inclusion of both contemporary and American composers and overall creativity and originality.  The latter would imply programs that step out of the Overture - Concerto - Symphony box.  Also of important note is the presentation of works outside the standard repertory; i.e. why offer yet another performance of Dvorak 7 (or 8 or 9) or Shostakovich 5--regardless of my own love for those works--when there are hundreds of neglected works that may be favored by audiences (and surely the players).  Do we need yet another performance of Beethoven 5 instead of say, the Bizet Symphonie?  Or what about the Franck--long a staple of the repertoire that now seems to be rarely played?  I could make a long list of neglected works and that's just the works of the "masters."

It is incumbent upon the modern day symphony to be a proponent of the music of our time BECAUSE that is the heritage of the medium.  It was not until the mid to late nineteenth century that works of the past started to form any kind of "repertory."  In the time of Mozart and Haydn, people were "discovering" the works of Bach and Handel as if they'd been composed in another millennium, rather than some one hundred years previous.  In Mozart's time (and Beethoven's and many other's) the music presented on a concert program had to be new.  There were no "interpreters" of the music of the past; most performers were led by the composers themselves.  But, somewhere along the way (the early twentieth century and the rise of serialism?) the audience became disconnected from the music of its time.  If we are to remain viable, we must espouse the changing milieu in which we live.

That very first year there was actually no winner.  Not a single eastern Iowa orchestra could rise to a fairly simple set of criteria.  Last year's winner was an easy selection:

The true winner of the 2012-13 "Huey" Award for creative orchestral program (again remember it's the sum total) must be the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony. The orchestra established a new business model this spring, naming Music Director Jason Weinberger to a position as CEO. While this may seem a daring move (and a daunting one for the Music Director), Weinberger has already proven that he has the chops to take the reins of an orchestra that had experienced at least ten years of conducting crises and turn it into a fine instrument, performing in the finest concert hall in the state.

Starting with an all-Bach program in April, the WCFSO includes new or little-known works on nearly every program, including:

September: Gabriel Kahane: Crane Palimpsest (2012) with Gabriel Kahane, vocalist along with selections from Purcell's Fairy Queen.

October: works by Ingolf Dahl: Quodlibet on American Folk Tunes and Folk Dances and Zoltán Kodály: Variations on a Hungarian Folksong, ‘The Peacock’.

November, in collaboration with the Cedar Valley Chamber Music Festival: works by Walter Piston, John Harbison, Morton Gould, Peter Schickele (not in his nom de plume PDQ Bach), and Samuel Barber. 

February: more works by Barber and Harbison, including the latter's 2006 Concerto for Bass Viol.

March, along with the Northern Iowa Youth Orchestra, Iowa composer Jonathan Chenette's Rural Symphony (2000).

That is certainly a hard act to follow (n.b.: it should be stated that I write the program notes for the WCFSO but I have made every attempt to avoid bias in my selections).

I've knocked the Des Moines Symphony out of the running simply because of their dumb concert titles (The Moldau and Dvorak really makes one want to run to the Civic Center--by the way, it's Vltava, not the Moldau).

Starting with a kind of "non-award" for possibly the strangest set of works crammed into one concert is this "Dance and Romance" concert offered by the Dubuque Symphony.  (Why, in heaven's name, do February concerts have to be equated with love?  Why not Presidents?)

Mendelssohn: Wedding March
Cimarosa: Overture to the Secret Marriage
Elgar: Salut d'amour (Love's Greeting)
Gluck: Dance of the Blessed Spirits
Ravel: Pavane for a Dead Princess:  Dance?  Romance?  I see neither in this work so-titled because the composer simply liked the way the title sounded (in the original French). 
Vaughn (sic) Williams: Tuba Concerto:  An outstanding work, true--probably the greatest in the tuba repertoire (if that is really saying much.  But still, where's the romance?  In the second movement?  I'm trying to imagine "Tubby" dancing or singing a love song.)
Schubert: Symphony No. 9 "Unfinished" Huh?
Faure: Pavane Again, huh?
Mascagni: Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana:  Ok, this one ends with the tenor dying offstage.  Isn't it romantic?
Albeniz/Arnold: Tango in D

And, just in case no one noticed, all the composers are long dead.  In fact, the DSO is offering exactly one work by a living composer, Jennifer Higdon's seven minute Fanfare Ritmico, included on their "American in Paris" concert.  Yeah, I don't see the connection either.  The remainder of the DSO season is filled with excerpts from great works (Jesu, Joy..., How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place), and the usual smattering of the tried and true(?): Beethoven 6, Appalachian Spring (full orchestra I presume), Shostakovich Festive Overture, Pictures at an Exhibition, and more.  One living composer, a handful of dead (but extremely popular) Americans and the season adds up to a very safe potpourri of popular "hits."

The Quad City Symphony makes a dramatic improvement from it's "all dead men" season of 2012-

13, but there still seems a ways to go.  Three of the performances include living composers (surprise! one of whom is Jennifer Higdon) and two premieres, by Michael Torke and Minnesota native-Augustana College professor Jacob Bancks.  That being said (and lauded for that matter), much of the remainder of the programming is mundane, with "big works" including a Brahms piano concerto, Rachmaninoff 2nd symphony, Mendelssohn 4, and another Brahms, the second symphony.  Of special note will be the rarely heard (at least in these parts) Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler.

Orchestra Iowa is improved only somewhat from previous seasons.  This is the orchestra (formerly the Cedar Rapids Symphony) that proclaimed itself by the new moniker and wrestled Ballet Quad Cities away from that area's orchestra.  Their first concert includes a work by someone I know, Illinois College's Timothy Kramer.  But music by living composers stops right in its tracks and we're "treated" to programs with the likes of the Rachmaninoff Second (must be popular this year) and Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto.  What say we retire the latter in loving memory of one of its greatest interpreters, Van Cliburn?

But once again, CEO/Maestro Jason Weinberger and the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony have demonstrated what has become to be an excepted out-of-the-box philosophy regarding orchestral programing with a combination of old (and not necessarily well-known) and new, and a very moderate dose of tried and true, in order to keep long-standing patrons coming back to hear new things as well.  While the orchestra's season begins with an all-Dvorak program, that one takes place in a new concert venue (the RiverLoop AmpiTheatre) on the banks of the Cedar River in Waterloo, bringing the orchestra closer to its long-time home at West High School's Kersenbrock Auditorium.

The orchestra's season-opening gala performance begins with an infamous work (containing hundreds more cannon bursts than Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture) Beethoven's often-maligned Wellington's Victory.  I suppose it's worth hearing once.  The contemporary American minimalist school is represented with works by John Adams (Century Rolls) and Steve Reich (New York Counterpoint, featuring Weinberger on the clarinet).  The inclusion of these works almost forgives the conductor's inclusion of the never-ending Bolero as a finale.

The November concert is particularly poignant as it focuses on Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, the 1938 pogrom against Jewish populations in Nazi Germany and Austria.  Over 1000 synagogues were burned to the ground along with over 7000 Jewish-owned business in one of the most horrific events of the holocaust.  To memorialize this event, Weinberger has chosen contemporary works by Yehuda Yannay and Stephen Paulus, as well as Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes and the Chamber Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich.

The orchestra takes Mozart "off-campus" to the Brown Derby Saloon in February, while a March concert pays tribute to the viola, with no fewer than three contemporary solo works presented by soloist Nadia Sirota.  April is a busy month, with a world premiere for oboe and orchestra teaming up with Mahler's First Symphony; a youth concert; and what the orchestra bills as an "Imaginary Symphony" (the 85th Anniversary preview), with movements from Tchaikovsky's Sixth, Shostakovich's Eleventh, the second movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and the close of Stravinsky's Firebird.

For variety, commitment to the music of our time, and simply much more interesting programing choices, the 2013 Huey Award is (once again) presented to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony.