Birthdays happen when we light the candles

At the top, we met up with the twenty-five-year-old Richard Strauss contemplating the character of Don Juan, who originated as the legendary lover and scoundrel in 1630, attributed to Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina. In 1787, Mozart popularized Don Juan as Don Giovanni; Lord Byron’s 1819 satirical epic poem portrays Don Juan as a womanizer and a man easily seduced by women. In 1888, Strauss was inspired by Nicholas Lenau’s tone poem and thus started on his path of musical storytelling. Within a succinct eighteen-minute tour de force, Strauss portrays a man longing to find the one woman who possesses all the virtues he conjures up. “Unable to find his womanly ideal,” remarks Strauss, Don Juan sacrifices himself to unfulfillment. 

The opening upward orchestral flourish of strings swept us into the surety of ensuing drama, and Don Juan’s ardor blared out through the horns. Rapture flows to us with a singing oboe, followed by the sighing clarinet. Depicted throughout every orchestral section, we’re voyeurs along the flurry of conquests and their outcomes until we’re slam-banged at the final outcome with dissonant trumpets; silence precedes three pianissimo chords delivering Don Juan into the abyss of damnation. 

The ISO players were pitched into this whirlwind with hardly a moment of respite. They, and we, needed the respite of resetting the stage full of players for Mozart’s more intimate Concerto No. 24 in C Minor for Piano and Orchestra.

Characterized as dark and tragic, this concerto opens with somber strings playing against woodwinds. After the strings lighten up, the solo pianist enters with a mollifying idea that invites a conversation. But tragedy is rising up, and how is it to be absorbed? Piano and orchestra go back and forth with pathos and sighs until a resolute glimmer of pride not to succumb spreads through the orchestra’s sections, and the piano sings hopefulness. Pianist Joyce Yang totally brought us into her embrace along with her alliance with the orchestra, and the ISO players were at her side, sharing with us the depth of friendship when things go amiss. They worked out the possibilities and sent us into intermission, feeling a sense of pride in overcoming adversity. 

Joyce Yang is a Grammy-nominated pianist who champions new music while delivering fresh insights into the standard repertoire. 

In the time before COVID-19, the ISO commissioned new short works as commentaries on Beethoven’s life and works. Donnacha Dennehy’s poignant five-minute “Brink” gained its world premiere February 2-4 at the Hilbert Circle Theatre. 

“One thing that draws me to Beethoven is the way he takes an idea to the brink, the way something initially innocuous can take on more and more ramifications as the work proceeds. During the early days of the pandemic, it also felt as if we were being collectively taken to the brink, especially for those of us living in America. That feeling drives this work's propulsive forward energy, " Dennehy said. [see: https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/61098/Brink--Donnacha-Dennehy/

Being on the brink of some event is a theme that runs through Dennehy’s compositions. Here, with instrumentation calling for: “2 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings,” we’re in a melee of gaining our footing on a lurching planet. The stage is reset again. Violins are in their regular place on stage right, but the horns are on their flank, and the winds are center stage with the bass, cellos, and violas on stage left.

As a five-minute tone poem in the wake of his large-scale musico-dramatic works, this musing on Beethoven is “marked by a kind of volatile tonality that travels in and out of an overtone-based focus,” cites https://soundstreams.ca/artist-spotlight-composer-donnacha-dennehy/

This work was composed about the time that Dennehy brought forward his opera, “The Hunger,” culled from the tragedy of The Great Irish Famine of 1845-1852. The potato blight cast a pall on the landscape along with the population that had nothing to eat. He is depicting a time and place that’s a far cry from the storied Green Isle.

What now is our brink, or is it merely a perpetual condition with catastrophe always alongside, in front, behind, and only by sheer force do we keep from falling, be it into an abyss or a funk.

“His fascination with the way time and light stretch and contract through the seasons of the year in his native Ireland, and the psychological impact of such phenomena, has often influenced the structure of his music generally,” reads his biographical notice. “There is often a tension between the poetic and the structural in his music. He is attracted to obsessive processes but nearly always breaks them. The intersection between words and music, and the vocal sean-nós (old style) tradition has exerted a strong pull over him too since he was a child. Returning to Ireland after studies abroad, principally at the University of Illinois in the US, Dennehy founded Crash Ensemble in 1997. Alongside the singers Dawn Upshaw and Iarla Ó Lionáird, Crash Ensemble features on the 2011 Nonesuch release of Dennehy’s music, entitled Grá agus Bás. Other releases include a number by NMC Records in London, Bedroom Community in Reykjavik and Cantaloupe in New York. He joined the music faculty at Princeton University in 2014, and now lives in America. In recent years, Dennehy has completed a trilogy of operas with Enda Walsh, The Last Hotel (2015), The Second Violinist (2017) and The First Child (2021). He has also written a kind of “docu-cantata”, The Hunger, for Alarm Will Sound, which was released by Nonesuch in 2019. Augustin Hadelich premiered his new violin concerto in the Netherlands in October 2021.

How does “Brink” lead us to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93? Composed in 1812, it premiered in 1814. “The year 1812 was a terrible one for Ludwig van Beethoven,” writes Marianne Williams Tobias, in her program notes, enumerating a litany of family troubles, personal illness, hearing loss, financial and emotional crisis. He needed to pull back, see a bit of goodness. As with Mozart, Beethoven endured a terrible childhood—in contrast with the happy childhoods of the other two composers on this bill.

Musicologist Milton Cross writes, “It has, throughout the four movements, an infectious gaiety and the irrepressible high spirits of, in Wagner’s description, “The games and caprices of a child.”

“To maintain a consistent mood of levity Beethoven supplanted the customary slow movement with  an Allegretto scherzando in which a sprightly little theme in the violins and cellos is set against soft, but brisk chords in the winds. It is often suggested that the even rhythm of these chords was meant to satirize the metronome, which Beethoven’s friend Malzel had recently invented.””

I’m conjuring up nature awakening from our long winter. Birds have returned and are reclaiming their houses strung up on my front porch. I’m envisioning a safe passage too for the butterflies to return to the gardens around my house, with regrowth of plantings that suit their needs. In all of its steadfastness to overcome adversity, nature comes to us as a minuet as a gift from Beethoven.

The ISO players are playground mates, Matthew Halls is all a-flow on the grace of Beethoven’s lightness of horns and clarinets and everyone in every chair is a-twitter with excitement. Trumpets call us to high humor, jollity and spirits, announces Tobias; get with this program. Find a reason to breathe expansively despite the world’s and your personal woes suffocating you.

I admit to a lot of pondering about the choice of works for a program. Whoever makes the call certainly gets me thinking and noticing, seeking and mulling. I really want to hear “Brink” again—but it’s not to be found as played. 

Then on Sunday, as I was in the midst of all this thinking, my friends Ingrid and David Bellman whisked me to connect with the newly composed “Requiem For the Adrift & Shattered,” gaining its second performance at the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation, following its world premiere on January 29 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. This multimedia work is addressing “issues of social justice/injustice within the structure of a classical requiem that accompanies a funeral mass,” explains Clare Longendyke. She sent out a call to composer-friends, to a film-maker friend, and set herself to find poems that enlarge and enfold the theme. 

“Adrift & Shattered” is hardly the mold I wanted to fit myself into on a sun-filled Sunday. An hour later, I found myself applauding what actually is an uplifting meditation on what we perceive as loss. Wake up and sing, forget mournful, follow the perfect one-liner: get up and quit kvetching; do something positive. That’s what Longendyke undertook.

The composers gathered from world-wide are Rex Isenberg, Reinaldo Moya, Nkeiru Okoye and Emily Koh. The new film is by the Weatherhouse Company. Reach out to clarelongendyke@gmail.com to learn more; get involved.

And for more uplift, catch an engrossing conversation with Monika Herzig and Cathy Morris here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHZgCGvnixg

“Talking Jazz features conversations, stories, insights, and guided listening with today's jazz creators hosted by pianist, composer, author, and educator Monika Herzig,” announced the email. “Violinist and arts entrepreneur Cathy Morris, beyond being a major Yamaha touring artist, is single-handedly changing the landscape of Indianapolis through her organization Arts With A Purpose. She calls her music Party Jazz - it's tight and powerful; you’ll hear Cathy give a shout out to the late Chuck Workman.”

For more about Monika Herzig’s wide-ranging programs Email:  jazzpianomonika@gmail.com

coming up:

February 8, 7:00 p.m., Madam Walker Legacy Center at 617 Indiana Avenue 46202, Free concert, Sphinx [Aaron P. Dworkin, founder] and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra with Titus Underwood, Ruben Rengel, Yu Jin and Austin Huntington. Program information and free tickets here: 

https://www.indianapolissymphony.org/event/22-23-february-sphinx-series/?utm_source=wordfly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2-2_MKT_Sphinx&utm_content=version_A&uid=58785&sourceNumber=35619

February 10, at 11:00 a.m. and at 8:00 p.m.

February 11, at 8:00 p.m.

Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, POPS, “The Doo Wop Project,” Hilbert Circle Theatre, 45 Monument Circle, 46204

tickets: IndianapolisSymphony.org; 317-639-4300

February 15, 7:30p.m., Madam Walker Legacy Center at 617 Indiana Avenue 46202, “Genre-defying jazz violinist Regina Carter and pianist Xavier Davis present an evening of jazz. Inspired by jazz, R&B, Latin, classical, blues, pop and African music, Carter encapsulates multiple genres and transforms them into a world of exploration through her violin. Pianist Xavier Davis is a virtuoso with more than 50 albums to his name. Tickets and information here: https://violin.org/shop/live-and-virtual-tickets/regina-carter-and-xavier-davis-at-the-madam-walker-inspirational-jazz/?utm_source=wordfly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feb2023enews&utm_content=version_A

MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient and three-time Pulitzer Prize jurist Regina Carter brings her genre-bending artistry to the Madam C. J. Walker Theatre on Wednesday, February 15. Together with jazz, the duo is a “merging of two great musical minds and four talented hands.” (Twin Cities Pioneer Press). Inspired by jazz, R&B, Latin, classical, blues, pop and African music, Carter and Davis encapsulate multiple genres and transform them into a world of exploration.

Tickets for this live performance are $40 for Adults and $10 for Students.

February 17, at 8:00 p.m.

February 18, at 5:30 p.m.

Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Strauss’ Oboe Concerto, premier of Augusta Read Thomas “Sun Dance,” and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op.68 (“Pastoral”)

Hilbert Circle Theatre, 45 Monument Circle, 46204

tickets: IndianapolisSymphony.org; 317-639-4300