Grams and Elgin Symphony Making Their Point

Some in the audience may not have expected a noisy, expository dialogue with the conductor in the middle of the concert Saturday, but that is now common during performances by the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, even on the most sophisticated of programs.

When viewed from the stage, the utilitarian design of the main auditorium at the Hemmens Cultural Center looks like a public university lecture hall, and the person with the microphone will be tempted to start a discussion. It could very well explain the chemistry between the naturally loquacious Music Director Andrew Grams and an audience that loves to listen. 

Roughly a thousand people braved the cold temperatures and applauded freely between movements of three classics from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

A chamber ensemble sat in a half-circle to begin the concert with Octet (1923) by Igor Stravinsky, a landmark piece that signaled a return to composing music that stood as "art for art's sake." The outstanding eight-piece wind ensemble (with no alto voices) gave it a suitably cerebral reading, unfazed by its metrical changeups, tumbling scales and dissonances.

Afterwards, Grams offered perspective on the piece and invited reaction from the audience. Serving as a five-minute music appreciation class while the stage was reset, the brief exchange revealed how large a part of the audience was actually paying close attention to the music and the excellent program notes.

Grams' remarks introduced Violin Concerto No. 1 (1923) by Sergei Prokofiev, which had premiered at the same Paris concert as Octet. Soloist Angelo Xiang Yu displayed amazing scope of technique on an instrument with tone so sweet it could imitate the breath through a woodwind.

Violin soloist Angelo Xiang Yu performs Prokofiev's Violin Concert No. 1 with
the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrew Grams.

The full orchestra was in excellent form after a busy holiday concert season and played a precise score to Yu's vivid protagonism. He delivered confident glances to the audience between impossibly high lyrical passages, scorching fiddle chords, flying spiccato and echoes of a plucked guzheng.

The accompaniment surged with a colorful narrative in the finale as Yu carried off trills and runs like single note melodies into a standing ovation. The audience was rewarded with an unaccompanied solo as an encore.

Many had come to hear Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, "Eroica" (1805), widely regarded as a turning point in the historic evolution of symphonic style. And they were not disappointed, some saying it was the best rendition they'd ever heard.

From the subliminal string tremolos to crashing chords, Maestro Grams kept the ESO's forces in balance for 47 minutes with eloquent physicality, mouthing the melodies and never missing a cue.

At his direction, the wind choir shone brilliantly against Beethoven's restless eighths, and solos were clear and precise. The tuttis were always tightly synchronized, and the dynamic contrasts achieved by the 65-voice ensemble were breathtaking. With these artists speaking for him, Beethoven has lost none of his persuasive power after more than two centuries.

More and more, the ESO is taking a service-oriented approach, making the music accessible through affordable ticket prices, programming variety, community outreach, and not least of all, education. You can find no better place to enrich your quality of life than in this audience.

Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf

In 1891, Sergei Prokofiev was born on a country estate in a rural area of the Russian Empire which is now part of Ukraine.  His parents, though of modest means, were nonetheless educated and ambitious.  His father was the estate manager; his mother, an accomplished pianist in her own right, nurtured the young Prokofiev's obvious musical precocity but allowed him to discover it largely on his own.  By age 12, he had become a student of pianist-composer Reinhold Gliere, and had already composed two operas, a symphony, and dozens of piano works.  He was accepted at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and completed ten years of study with some of the best known Russian musicians of the day — Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov, and Anatol Liadov. As a student, he was commended for his astonishing piano performances much more so than for his compositions, whose adventurous rhythms and harmonies were considered shocking and uncivilized. 

Prokofiev traveled Europe and Asia through the turbulent 1910's, but eventually sought new audiences in the United States, Paris and London, and remained in the West for 25 years, composing and performing a wide range of choral, symphonic and virtuoso piano pieces.  By 1935, however, almost all of his commissions were coming from within the Soviet Union, and he moved to Moscow permanently in 1936, the same year he wrote "Peter and the Wolf" for the Central Children's Theater. 

The intent of this work was to "cultivate musical tastes in children from the first years in school," an idea to which he warmly related.  Sources say he completed this "symphonic tale" in less than two weeks, perhaps as little as four days, supplying his own narrative based on memories of his childhood.  Prokofiev introduces sections of the orchestra to the audience as characterizations, with Peter portrayed by the strings, the Bird by the flute, the Duck by the oboe, the Cat by the clarinet, the Wolf by the horn section, the Grandfather by the bassoon and so on.  Though the composer was disappointed at its premier, “Peter and theWolf” has gone on to become a favorite of children as well as sophisticated adult listeners since that time. 

In the period that followed, Prokofiev continued a vigorous and productive composing and performing career, all the while struggling to stay on good terms with the ever more repressive and paranoid Communist government.  By 1950, the political climate in the Soviet Union became increasingly isolationist, and a number of composers and other artists suffered official denouncements for their international ties, among them Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Khatchadourian.

In his final eight years life, suffering from poor health triggered by a fall and concussion, Prokofiev produced more symphonies, concertos, sonatas and other works, some rather blandly patriotic.  His last public appearance was at the premiere of his popular, but somber Symphony No. 7, also composed for young audiences, for which he received the 1957 Lenin Prize (posthumously) after his death in 1953.