Lucy Gellman Photo
Minutes into the third movement of Jean Sibelius’s first symphony, the violins leaned slightly forward in one great, collective gesture, gently plucking the strings of their instruments in a falling plink, plink, plink that bounced like marbles on the stage, rolling to the musicians seated widely around it. The French horns nodded. The cellist opened his eyes a little wider. A scene emerged around the music: a tramping, traipsing run through a snowy and deeply wooded forest, reindeer lifting their heads beneath the thick brush.
From the center of the stage, Heejung Park raised his baton higher, slowly drawing in his cupped left hand as if readying the orchestra for a magic spell. He leaned forward and punched the air. The brass, right on cue, unleashed a fury of notes. They were off.
Welcome to a particularly musical Saturday afternoon at the Fair Haven School on Grand Avenue, where the New Haven Chamber Orchestra performed their 2014 fall concert last weekend. Made up of professional, semi-professional, second-career, and hobby musicians — all of whom are volunteers — the orchestra has a gift for taking tough, hard-to-interpret pieces from a wide swath of music history and tackling them with grace and panache.
But ask Jessica Sack, president of the NHCO’s board of directors, about how the orchestra got to Sibelius, and she paints a picture of intense practice schedules, repeated measures, callused fingers, and some serious moments of self and group doubt. Botton line: no blood, but definitely sweat and tears.
“The Sibelius symphony was so hard because it was a piece of music that not everyone was familiar with … it took a lot of work,” Sack said after the concert.
What clinched their success, she thinks, was Park’s guidance and interpretive skill. The conductor, who took over for Jonathan Brandani at the beginning of this year’s concert season, comes to New Haven from Korea and Finland, where he trained at the Korea National University of Arts and Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. As a student of Leif Segerstam, known for his complete symphonies of Sibelius, Park had a new vision for the piece in mind and wanted to see it come to fruition.
“He was able to bring interpretation to us from his recent studies. We’re especially excited for it,” Sack added.
As a result, pieces like Symphony 1, as well as the overture to Carl Maria von Weber’s Oberon and Franz Shubert’s Symphony No. 8 (Unfinished) captured not only the infectious enthusiasm of the group, but an adventurous spirit that has come with new season. Already invested in literacy outreach and kid-friendly concerts, the ensemble is forging ahead with a third way to get involved with the community: an initiative to foster a stronger partnership with the Fair Haven school where they practice and play their concerts, and an increased attention to music in the schools. In this spirit, their spring 2015 concert will feature guitarist and teacher Ian Tuski.
That’s something we can all look forward to.
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