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There was a tricky passage in John Coragliano’s “Chaconne” from The Red Violin that still wasn’t quite hanging together. Or so it seemed to the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and its conductor, William Boughton, on Tuesday night’s rehearsal. To almost anyone else, Coragliano’s piece sounded like it was already home. But for those playing it — from soloist Bella Hristova on violin to the concertmaster to the first clarinet, who quickly exchanged comments in between running the passage — there were still a few details to get right.
“Chaconne” is one of the pieces in the NHSO’s upcoming concert entitled Cinematic Dances, which will also include Paul Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. The NHSO’s first performance of the program will be Thursday at the Shubert Theater, with further performances on May 30 at Hamden Middle School and May 31 at Shelton Intermediate School.
Coragliano’s piece follows in the now long tradition of composers who use film commissions to write unusual, difficult, and brilliant music across a wide range of moods and styles that they might not have the chance to explore otherwise. The soundtrack to The Red Violin must have been a plum assignment, as the movie follows the long life of the titular instrument across three hundred years, from Italy to England to China to Canada, and many points in between. The instrument, in other words, is the main character, and for Coragliano, it’s a reason to write what, for lack of better vocabulary, I will call a really kick-ass violin concerto.
In the “Chaconne,” Coragliano gets some sounds out of the orchestra that both surprise and show what an orchestra can do that almost no other ensemble can. The first and second violins unfurl sheets of billowing notes and stabbing chords that build drama and texture. The brass and winds are put through a workout that ranges from rumbling pads of chords, to booming steps that sound like they’re made by drunken giants, to near apocalyptic blasts of notes in response to some of the violin’s more desperate calls. Perhaps most inventive is Coragliano’s use of harp, percussion, and the percussive effects you can pull out of a double bass to create a soundscape that seems, at times, impossible for acoustic instruments to make. All of this surrounds an athletic, virtuosic part for the soloist that kitchen-sinks classical techniques on the violin to create a piece that moves, in a fleet 16 minutes or so, from moments of near-complete serenity and obvious beauty to full-on panic. It’s an exhilarating piece — and one that takes a lot of work to put together.
On Tuesday evening, the NHSO was down to rehearsing the piece’s final passages, in which, following an arcing cadenza from the violin, the orchestra moves into a lurching, menacing passage in which the entire ensemble has to bring its all to a furious, odd-metered, roof-shaking climax.
They ran the passage first without Hristova.
Then they ran it again with Hristova adding her part. Boughton stopped them halfway through it, gentle but insistent.
“Not quite right,” he said.
Hristova and Boughton exchanged notes on the details of the long crescendo the score insisted on, figuring out how best to support one another. The concertmaster and the first chair second violin did the same. They ran it again and got almost to the end. They ran it again. Each pass was tighter, more dramatic, more emotional, as each musician in the orchestra keyed into what all the other musicians were doing.
At last they reached the pieces final measures. By this time Hristova’s part was a burst of flying notes. Her right hand was a blur. Her brow furrowed, her head shook a little with each accent she placed. They reached the end. Hristova sent up a last firework of a passage from Corigliano’s score and the orchestra responded with a final crash and shriek.
There was a split second of silence. Then Boughton began tapping his baton on his stand in applause. The rest of the orchestra followed suit. On one level, they were applauding Hristova and the obvious skill, stamina, and passion she had put into the piece — passion from which the rest of the orchestra could draw. On another level, they were celebrating for having realized Corigliano’s difficult and beautiful music. It was all too easy to imagine that applause multipled by a hundred in the Shubert tomorrow, when the public gets to hear it for itself.
The New Haven Symphony performs Cinematic Dances on May 28 at 7:30 p.m., at the Shubert Theater, 247 College St. It will perform the program again on May 30 at 2:30 p.m. at Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium at Hamden Middle School, 2623 Dixwell Ave., Hamden, and on May 31 at 3:00 p.m. at Shelton Intermediate School, 675 Constitution Blvd. North, Shelton. Click here for tickets and more information.
