When she was 9 years old, Toni Harp played the violin so, well, badly, that her father asked her mother to tell her to please stop.
This week that former violinist, who subsequently took up the piano and then politics with more success, became New Haven’s next mayor — and then two nights later even won over the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
The mayor-elect was not playing the violin. Instead she appeared at Woolsey Hall as a surprise guest to introduce “The Lark Ascending.”
That piece by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was inspired by a the poem composed by Victorian writer George Meredith.
Harp introduced the piece, described as a “romance for violin and orchestra,” and then read the first dozen rhyming couplet lines of the very long lyric, which Vaughan Williams had included with his 1920 score.
The poem tracks the flight, singing, drinking, head-turning, indeed every action of a skylark, and how they might inspire us non-avian beings to soar a little more.
Click on the video at the top of the story to catch of snippet of the last few lines of Harp’s recitation.
Here are the lines she recited:
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake …
For singing till his heaven fills,
‘Tis love of earth that he instills,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes …
Till lost on his aerial rings
in light, and then the fancy sings.
When she finished, she told the appreciative audience: “Enjoy!”
Vaughan Williams’ piece shared the program with two works by another English composer, William Walton, whose work the NHSO is celebrating and recording this season. The conductor was Willam Boughton. In “The Lark Ascending” the many rapid and trilling violin solo passages in high register were nimbly played by the orchestra’s concertmaster Ani Kavafian.
Harp recalled the childhood violin episode during an intermission interview, at which she was joined by NHSO Executive Director Elaine Carroll and Board President Burton Alter.
She said she was last on the stage with NHSO at an appreciation concert for Dr. Regina Warner, the longtime champion of music education in the public schools, who died in 2011.
Harp’s appearance was was not related to her winning the election on Tuesday. The symphony had previously planned it as part of a line-up of surprise guests, one at each concert, to underscore the orchestra’s theme this year: “120 seasons … still surprising.”
In October, when the orchestra played a program of Tchaikovsky music, an actor appeared as the Russian composer and stayed in character.
NHSO’s Alter and Carroll.
Harp appeared just as herself and was loudly applauded when introduced by the NHSO’s board president.
The NHSO is the fourth-oldest orchestra in the United States. New Haven-based, it will perform or conduct music education events in every county of the state, said Carroll.
“Toni’s been a great supporter of the orchestra” and appreciates its importance to the community, she added.
