A Season to Celebrate

Chances are we won’t be seeing many of you at the Nashville Symphony Orchestra’s gala concert Saturday at the new Schermerhorn Symphony Center. With top tickets at $2,500 a pop, this extravaganza promises to be the exclusive social event of the season, a veritable parade of elite society’s hauteur and couture, a bedazzling and bejeweled spectacle. Which raises our first and most immediate question: are you planning to bring the pitchforks and torches, or should we? Actually, Tennessee’s hoi polloi will have access to this event, since it will be simulcast on public television. And what we’re all likely to see is the usual gala glitz. There will be the obligatory high-priced artists, most notably conductor Leonard Slatkin, the NSO’s new and worthy music advisor, and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade. And, of course, there will be music, much of it retrograde, but hopefully at least some it inspiring, even life-affirming. Without question, the most highly anticipated piece on Saturday’s program is also the most artistically suspect, a new concerto by a trio of composers—banjo player Béla Fleck, tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain and bass player Edgar Meyer. The NSO co-commissioned this triple concerto specifically for the gala. “Opening night is going to be a big moment for us, and the world’s eyes will be on us, so of course we needed a celebratory piece,” says Alan Valentine, NSO’s president. “And working with these musicians made sense since we wanted a piece that says something about who we are and where we’re from.” Fair enough, but music by what appears to be a “committee of composers” can give pause, at the very least because such works tend to sound like derivative Muzak. And yet the presence of Meyer’s name on the program is admittedly a good sign. A Vanderbilt University professor, Meyer is a gifted composer who’s known both for his lyrical imagination and meticulous craftsmanship. Indeed, his portfolio includes perhaps the finest bass concerto written since Bottesini put away his pen in the 19th century. We can only hope that he had the dominant hand in writing this new concerto, with Fleck and Hussain included primarily for spice and atmospheric color. If that’s the case it could be a good piece. Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Festive Overture,” also on the gala program, was composed in a blinding flash of inspiration in 1954 (was that inspiration the death of the composer’s chief tormentor, Joseph Stalin, a year earlier?), and is a positively effervescent work. It should make for an effective opener, and its inclusion gives a happy nod to the 100th anniversary of Shostakovich’s birth. The final movements of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor (“Resurrection”), meanwhile, will give a bit of a misty and melancholy nod to the namesake of the new concert hall, Kenneth Schermerhorn, the former NSO music director who died in April 2005. Schermerhorn was a passionate Mahler conductor, and if there’s any music that has a chance of achieving transcendence at this gala, it will likely be from this symphony, with its soaring soprano solos and diaphanous choral textures. The only disappointment is that we won’t get to hear the whole thing—it’s a blasted “gala,” and therefore we get only Mahler highlights. So opening night may well end up being a frothy event. But we can’t help but cheer on this great little orchestra, since these days both the ensemble and its city seem to be doing most things right. Already, the city’s premium concert hall has begun to attract great soloists and touring orchestras, which, like NASCAR drivers, want to give Schermerhorn’s already reputable acoustics a test drive. One such group is the Cleveland Orchestra, without a doubt the most perfectly synchronized musical organism in American classical music, which appears at the hall on Jan. 15. Emanuel Ax, America’s preeminent concert pianist, will also be here, playing on April 17 with none other than Nashville’s redoubtable Edgar Meyer. Arguably, the best thing about the NSO is that it has its priorities straight. Look at it this way. There are basically two gripes you always hear about classical music: that it’s hopelessly hidebound and overly focused on the past, where most people don’t want to be; and that it’s elitist, appealing primarily to smug, upscale listeners. For the most part, those indictments are sadly true, and the result nowadays is a classical audience that looks like a field of gray hair. And yet it’s hard to accuse the NSO of being either especially hidebound or elitist (hoity-toity galas excepted). In fact, a quick look at the NSO’s 2006-07 season shows an orchestra that is remarkably contemporary, down-to-earth and American, and for that we have to thank the group’s American Encores initiative. This project correctly recognizes that world premieres are a dime a dozen, and so it focuses on works that have received world premieres but not second performances. “It takes multiple performances for a new piece of music to get legs,” says Augusta Read Thomas, whose 20-minute orchestral piece “Tangle” receives its second performance in Nashville Sept. 28-30. “The best thing about the Nashville program, though, is that it has guts. They’re not just playing five-minute overtures. They’re presenting very substantial 20- and 30-minute contemporary works.” In addition to opening night’s gala concerto, the NSO has co-commissioned two other significant works: Philip Glass’ “The Passion of Ramakrishna” (Feb. 15-17), and Michael Daugherty’s “Concerto for Piano.” Glass’ visit should be especially rewarding, since it will feature a sort of mini-Glass festival, including a performance of the Philip Glass Ensemble (Feb. 18). What else is noteworthy this season? Try the guest conductors. Last month, the NSO got something of a reprieve when it signed on Slatkin to be its artistic advisor. “Slatkin gives us some breathing room,” says Mark Wait, dean of Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music and the chairman of the NSO’s music director search committee. “Now we have time to do a good search.” And the first place any orchestra will search is its roster of guest conductors. “We are definitely interested in some of our guest conductors this season,” Valentine says. “We’re not saying which ones, but we’ll be listening. Click here to read an exclusive interview with symphony music advisor Leonard Slatkin.