When Auburn Performing Arts Center allotted February 14 and 15 to the Auburn Symphony’s winter concert, Valentine’s Day was the only choice for the theme. However, conductor Stewart Kershaw’s thinking is as usual outside the box and no one going to the concert is going to hear only music that is chocolate, wine and roses.
Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” came immediately to his mind, but the orchestra had played that some years back.
Then, Kershaw says, “My mind went ‘Click!’. There’s another version by Tchaikovsky. The one everyone knows is the revised version. We’ll do the original “Fantasy” Overture of 1869.”
The idea met with his wants for the Auburn Symphony. Kershaw started the orchestra in 1996 to give Seattle freelance musicians, who mostly play in chamber groups, the Fifth Avenue Theater or in the pit at Pacific Northwest Ballet, the opportunity to perform full scale orchestral works they rarely otherwise have a chance to do. He mines musical backwaters for scores that will interest both the musicians and the Auburn audience and this original Tchaikovsky score met his criteria perfectly.
“The love scene is there, and the fight scene, but it opens in different fashion and it ends in different fashion. It’s a different view, from a younger Tchaikovsky.”
With love in mind and having chosen his first work of passionate young love and loss, Kershaw then went to a favorite composer of his, Ernest Chausson, and came up with another, “Poem of Love and the Sea.”
Chausson set two poems by a completely unknown poet, Maurice Bouchor. The first tells of a time of lilacs when love is blossoming. It’s followed by an interlude, and then the second poem shows that this love eventually dies.
“Oddly enough,” says Kershaw, “ this was written for a tenor, but for many decades it has been sopranos and mezzos who’ve sung it.” His choice is mezzo-soprano Melissa Plagemann who sang “Messiah” with the ASO a couple of months go.
Lastly, Kershaw turned to a completely different, darker face of love, that of paid love and lust and violence.
“I wanted something for the ASO to get its teeth into and I try to fill in gaps in their repertoire. We’d never done Bartok’s “Miraculous Mandarin” Suite. It’s a spectacular showcase for an orchestra and any orchestra should tackle it at least once in its life.
“The Miraculous Mandarin” started as a ballet, but after its first performance at Cologne Opera House in 1925 it was banned as too horrific.” (Those who saw Spectrum Dance Theatre’s version choreographed by Donald Byrd a couple of years ago will agree wholeheartedly that it’s a grisly story.)
Afterward, Bartok extracted music for a suite, and that’s what Auburn is playing this weekend in a program titled “The Passions and Perils of Love.”
The performances are Saturday at 7.30, Sunday at 2.30 at Auburn Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $20-25 at 253-939-8509 or auburnsymphony.org. There’s a package deal with dinner for two at Copper Falls Restaurant, either day at $100 for two. End
Philippa KIraly
