New Haven Symphony Orchestra Lights Up the Night
STAFF WRITER
By Penny Brandt
Last Thursday, October 16, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra presented its concert,
“Northern Lights,” at Yale’s Woolsey Hall in New Haven. The Orchestra performed
Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, a Shostakovich Violin Concerto, and Sibelius’ First Symphony.
The Peer Gynt Suite was composed as incidental music for a play, titled “Peer Gynt,” by
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The more famous parts of this piece are the
“Morning Mood” (which you may have heard in cartoons when characters are first
waking up), and “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” which portrays Peer Gynt trying to
escape from the dark inside of the Mountain, being chased by the King’s soldiers,
because Gynt has gone and knocked up the Mountain King’s daughter. (Oops.)
Next, the concert took a more serious mood, as William Boughton described the
conditions in the 1940s in Soviet Russia under which Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his
Violin Concerto in A minor. The composer’s music was subject to scrutiny by the
government, and he risked imprisonment, or even death, if his music was too innovative.
Shostakovich was an incredibly creative and innovative guy, so it was very difficult for
him to compose within the restrictions placed by the government. The violin concerto
was performed beautifully by Augustin Hadelich, a young German-Italian violinist.
The final piece was Jean Sibelius’ First Symphony in E minor. This piece was first
performed in the composer’s native Finland, in 1899. Although it is not as brass-heavy
as some of Sibelius’ other pieces, the work is frequently very loud. There is nice contrast
between soft sections, but when it gets loud, it shakes the whole room. There is no
amplification, of course, but there are 70 musicians onstage, perfectly coordinated, and
playing the heck out of their instruments. Definitely a sight worth hearing!
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra will next be performing at 7:30pm on November
13, a concert featuring Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, “Pathétique.”