So many stories in The Star Press have made me ashamed to live in Muncie that I want to share an experience that made me proud.
I attended a performance of the Muncie Symphony Orchestra on March 31 that just blew me away. I thought I knew what to expect. I've substituted in the viola section a few times, so I know what the orchestra is capable of. I wrote the program notes, so I'd studied the works being performed (Shostakovich Violin Concerto and the Beethoven Eroica Symphony). I've heard dozens of violin concertos in person, including performances by Itzhak Perlman, arguably the best violinist of our generation. And I've been to orchestra concerts in some of the best halls in the country, including New York's Alice Tully Hall and Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center. I didn't expect any surprises, let alone to be blown away.
The biggest surprise was the sound of the orchestra in Sursa Hall on the Ball State campus. As a viola player, I feel I have the best seat in the hall when I'm on stage, but Sursa Hall's acoustics are almost that good.
The night's program was Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 and Beethoven's 3rd Symphony (The Eroica). They both had many delicate moments that would be lost in other halls, and yet they were just as clear as the bombastic moments were powerful. In the age of the Internet and the mp3 format, there's still nothing like being there in person.
The next surprise was Anna Vayman's performance in the Shostakovich Violin Concerto. Her ethereal tone glided through one of the most demanding pieces in the violin repertoire. She has a buttery smoothness that's reminiscent of Perlman but with more depth of feeling. When she walked onto the stage, she looked like a fresh-faced youngster, but as soon as she lifted the violin to her chin, she transformed into a completely different character: the battered Shostakovich who poured out his bloodied soul into this work.
Even if you don't understand the work, you get the feeling that she understands it at a deep level. The cadenza for this concerto is eight minutes long, and even at the height of allergy season, there was not one cough or sneeze until Maestro Bohuslav Rattay raised his baton to ready the orchestra. I think it's because none of us were breathing.
So many stories in The Star Press have made me ashamed to live in Muncie that I want to share an experience that made me proud.
I attended a performance of the Muncie Symphony Orchestra on March 31 that just blew me away. I thought I knew what to expect. I've substituted in the viola section a few times, so I know what the orchestra is capable of. I wrote the program notes, so I'd studied the works being performed (Shostakovich Violin Concerto and the Beethoven Eroica Symphony). I've heard dozens of violin concertos in person, including performances by Itzhak Perlman, arguably the best violinist of our generation. And I've been to orchestra concerts in some of the best halls in the country, including New York's Alice Tully Hall and Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center. I didn't expect any surprises, let alone to be blown away.
The biggest surprise was the sound of the orchestra in Sursa Hall on the Ball State campus. As a viola player, I feel I have the best seat in the hall when I'm on stage, but Sursa Hall's acoustics are almost that good.
The night's program was Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 and Beethoven's 3rd Symphony (The Eroica). They both had many delicate moments that would be lost in other halls, and yet they were just as clear as the bombastic moments were powerful. In the age of the Internet and the mp3 format, there's still nothing like being there in person.
The next surprise was Anna Vayman's performance in the Shostakovich Violin Concerto. Her ethereal tone glided through one of the most demanding pieces in the violin repertoire. She has a buttery smoothness that's reminiscent of Perlman but with more depth of feeling. When she walked onto the stage, she looked like a fresh-faced youngster, but as soon as she lifted the violin to her chin, she transformed into a completely different character: the battered Shostakovich who poured out his bloodied soul into this work.
Even if you don't understand the work, you get the feeling that she understands it at a deep level. The cadenza for this concerto is eight minutes long, and even at the height of allergy season, there was not one cough or sneeze until Maestro Bohuslav Rattay raised his baton to ready the orchestra. I think it's because none of us were breathing.
So many stories in The Star Press have made me ashamed to live in Muncie that I want to share an experience that made me proud.
I attended a performance of the Muncie Symphony Orchestra on March 31 that just blew me away. I thought I knew what to expect. I've substituted in the viola section a few times, so I know what the orchestra is capable of. I wrote the program notes, so I'd studied the works being performed (Shostakovich Violin Concerto and the Beethoven Eroica Symphony). I've heard dozens of violin concertos in person, including performances by Itzhak Perlman, arguably the best violinist of our generation. And I've been to orchestra concerts in some of the best halls in the country, including New York's Alice Tully Hall and Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center. I didn't expect any surprises, let alone to be blown away.
The biggest surprise was the sound of the orchestra in Sursa Hall on the Ball State campus. As a viola player, I feel I have the best seat in the hall when I'm on stage, but Sursa Hall's acoustics are almost that good.
The night's program was Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 and Beethoven's 3rd Symphony (The Eroica). They both had many delicate moments that would be lost in other halls, and yet they were just as clear as the bombastic moments were powerful. In the age of the Internet and the mp3 format, there's still nothing like being there in person.
The next surprise was Anna Vayman's performance in the Shostakovich Violin Concerto. Her ethereal tone glided through one of the most demanding pieces in the violin repertoire. She has a buttery smoothness that's reminiscent of Perlman but with more depth of feeling. When she walked onto the stage, she looked like a fresh-faced youngster, but as soon as she lifted the violin to her chin, she transformed into a completely different character: the battered Shostakovich who poured out his bloodied soul into this work.
Even if you don't understand the work, you get the feeling that she understands it at a deep level. The cadenza for this concerto is eight minutes long, and even at the height of allergy season, there was not one cough or sneeze until Maestro Bohuslav Rattay raised his baton to ready the orchestra. I think it's because none of us were breathing.
Russians are the best orchestrators, and Shostakovich created so many beautiful and original sounds that you can consider the piece a concerto for the orchestra, too.
It was like a proverbial box of chocolates. From one moment to the next, you never knew if you'd hear gossamer shimmers in the strings or ominous rumblings from the tuba. After the concert, I went backstage and ran into the percussionists, so I asked what instrument had created the unique sounds in the second movement. They told me it was a regular (orchestral) gong, but it was played with finesse and orchestrated with such originality that I thought it was some rare and special instrument.
After listening to Vayman's passionate and technically brilliant performance, it was all I could do not to run right home and practice, and I think the string players on stage must have felt the same way. They were nearly flawless throughout the Eroica Symphony, a work with many opportunities for strings to crash and burn. They made it look easy.
The Eroica Symphony has been performed so many times by so many orchestras, I almost expected to be a bit bored. But the best masterpieces have layers of meaning, and Maestro Rattay's nuanced reading brought out ideas that other conductors gloss over.
I noticed stunning moments in the flute (Ball State's Mihoko Watanabe, who will be the soloist next month) for the first time ever. Principal oboist Aryn Sweeney (also from Ball State's School of Music) spun out gorgeous lines with a powerful and well-rounded tone, seemingly without ever breathing. Her tone rose above or cut through the orchestra in places where I've never heard the oboe before (even when sitting a few feet away on stage!).
Actually, the entire woodwind section and all the horns deserve their own standing ovation for crisp and courageous performances all around.
The Muncie Symphony Orchestra includes several Ball State faculty members, but the rest of the players are all professionally trained as well. Rattay can count on them to deliver, so audiences here can be treated to demanding and profound music.
April's concert will feature a new work by Ball State Professor Jody Nagel, featuring principal flutist Mihoko Watanabe, and Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. If you missed the March concert, I encourage you to catch the April concert. At its premiere in Leningrad, the symphony brought the audience to tears. Judging from this performance of the Shostakovich violin concerto, if you never "got" classical music before, being in Sursa Hall as the Muncie Symphony performs Shostakovich again may help you feel what I felt.
Source
Did you get to the Muncie Symphony Orchestra concert on Saturday evening? No? Too bad! You missed a good one. Sursa Hall at Ball State was sold out with music lovers and a few people who came along for the ride, like dutiful tone-deaf husbands accompanying their wives.
Talk about globalization of music. The program's corporate sponsor was the Verallia Co., which is the glass division of the French company known as Saint-Gobain. Verallia has an office here in Muncie.
The conductor of the MSO is Bohuslav Rattay, who comes to us from the Czech Republic.
The first number played was a violin concerto written by Dmitri Shostakovich -- a Russian from St. Petersburg -- who was among his other talents also a fire fighter in St. Petersburg during its long siege by Nazi forces during World War II.
Soloist was Anna Vayman, also a native of St. Petersburg and now an associate professor of violin at Ball State. Vayman can make a violin do everything but talk. What a performance.
The final musical extravaganza by the MSO was a symphony composed by a German who was going deaf! What? A deaf composer? Sounds impossible! Like a blind Leonardo da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa. This musical number was Symphony No. 3 by none other than good old Ludwig van Beethoven. Did you never hear his Fifth Symphony, which began with a musical dot-dot-dot-dash -- the Morse Code for the letter "V" and which became a musical victory symbol during World War II for the forces allied against the evil of Hitler's Nazi legions?
Yes, it was a concert with global connections -- a United Nations concert.
This planet Earth -- this little globe, this peculiar sphere, this rotating blob in the heavens -- is amazing. And when different nationalities cooperate, they make beautiful music together.
Phil Ball is a contributing writer to The Star Press.
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Ann Sursa Carney to perform with Muncie
Symphony Orchestra
- FILED UNDER
- All Access
- Music
- Ball State University
MUNCIE -- Organist Ann Sursa Carney returns to Sursa Hall to perform two organ concerti in the opening concert of the season, Sursa at Sursa.
Muncie Symphony Orchestra -- under Artistic Director Bohuslav Rattay and Ann Sursa Carney -- will kick off the 2011-12 performing season at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Sursa Hall on the campus of Ball State University.
The program begins with two organ concerti. The first, composed by George Frideric Handel, is Organ Concerto in B-flat Major, Op. 4, No. 2. This concerto is among Handel's best-known pieces and is frequently performed.
Organ Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 177, by Josef Gabriel Rheinberger, is the second piece on the program. Rheinberger's challenging virtuosic organ showpiece also includes beautiful melodies in a romantic style that can be heard as influenced by Brahms. The concert concludes with Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90.
Carney, an organist, performed with featured artist James David Christy in the dedication concert for the Sursa Family Concert Organ in Sursa Hall. She premiered Prelude and Fugue for Alexandria, a newly commissioned organ solo by Joel Martinson. Carney has served as organist for Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Alexandria, Va., for more than 25 years.
Originally from Muncie, Carney is a graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory. She has served in local chapters of the American Guild of Organists and the National Association of Pastoral Musicians. Carney coordinated the basic organist certification for the NPM at the national level. Her husband, Brian, is also an organist.
After the concert, a reception will be in Mueller Lobby.
Tickets can be bought at the Emens box office, on the campus of Ball State University, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays or thought Ticketmaster.
