Saturday night at Kleinhans Music Hall we were treated to two works composed roughly a century apart which, on the surface might seem different and yet, musically, were not so far apart. For me, the connection was the masterful use of the entire orchestra, soloist by soloist, section by section, first from 20th-century American composer (and former BPO Music Director 1971 – 1979) Michael Tilson Thomas with “From the Diary of Anne Frank” and then after intermission from 19th-century Czech composer Antonin Dvořák with his love letter to America “From the New World”.
I’ve seen audiences leap immediately to their feet at BPO concerts, but usually following a particularly stirring piano concerto and not often following a symphony. Here the reaction was quite astounding.
The evening began with the Anne Frank work.
Anne Frank was a Jewish girl forced into hiding in some upper rooms in Amsterdam during World War II and the Nazi occupation and over a few years took the diary that she was given on her 13th birthday and wrote about her dreams and fears and her life and hopes. Ultimately, she filled three volumes before the family was discovered and Anne was sent to concentration camps where she died in the Holocaust.
About that first work, “From the Diary of Anne Frank” composer Tilson Thomas wrote: “The work is a melodrama in the form of symphonic variations. It was written for Audrey Hepburn. Audrey had grown up in occupied Holland [where Anne Frank went into hiding]; she was exactly the same age as Anne Frank [both born one month apart in 1929] and identified strongly with her—and with the suffering of all children. This work was written as a vehicle for Audrey in her role as an ambassador for UNICEF. It takes its shape primarily from the diary passages that Audrey and I selected and read together.”
The selected passages were read beautifully and without affectation by local Cantor-Rabbi Penny Myers, beginning with Anne’s very first entry addressed, as most of her writing was, to her diary: “I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.”
I’ve read that at some point Anne was listening to a BBC broadcast in which a Dutch minister of culture urged everyone to preserve “ordinary documents – a diary, letters … simple everyday material” that could be studied after the war. Anne took this to heart and began editing and polishing her work.
What I found particularly fascinating was Tilson Thomas’s use of the entire orchestra and I could almost see the sound swirling about the stage, now here now there. At one point I had the curious thought that perhaps Tilson Thomas, as a conductor, looking at all those black dots on the page composed by others for years and years, had a more visceral or intimate understanding of exactly what those black dots could become.
So, as goofy as that might sound, I was quite gratified to re-read an interview just published on February 13 by Buffalo Rising’s Daniel Lendzian with the BPO’s guest conductor, Teddy Abrams, who was mentored by Tilson Thomas. Abrams remarked: “I would say that composition and conducting are very tightly linked for me, because they each provide a way into the task at hand… Composing gives you a deep insight into the creative process that generates the scores that you would then study as a conductor, and vice versa.”
Well, it’s a winning formula. Teddy Abrams, Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year, now in his tenth season as Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra, is also a Grammy winner, and a very engaging fellow as he took to the mic to talk about the first piece.
I was also fascinated during the music how the same percussion instruments (including four “mallet” instruments and two giant bass drums) could at one moment deliver the chilling sounds of war and death and then later provide joy and laughter.
After intermission it was all joy, with Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World.” Periodically local classical music radio station WNED Classical holds listener polls for “favorite” or “greatest” pieces of music. Usually Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 “Choral” wins the #1 spot, but occasionally listeners aren’t so blinded by the name “Beethoven” and they come to their senses and vote “From the New World” as #1, which I believe is only proper. It is a marvelous symphony with a mysterious opening that suddenly comes alive, a percussive scherzo the equal of Beethoven’s, and a finale marked on the score “with fire” that will warm anybody’s heart.
Of course, the most memorable moments come in the second movement, marked “Largo” (slow in tempo and broad in manner) which features the beautiful “Goin’ Home” melody given to the English Horn (cousin to the oboe) masterfully played at this concert by the BPO’s Anna Mattix.
The concert repeats this Sunday, February 18th, at 2:30 pm. Don’t miss it.
Kleinhans Music Hall is at “3 Symphony Circle” Buffalo, 14201 where Porter Avenue, Richmond Avenue, North Street and Wadsworth meet at a traffic circle. Visit www.bpo.org or call 716-885-5000. Full-service bar in the lobby or across the lobby in the Mary Seaton Room. Masks are optional. Concert Runtime: About two hours