New Season, New Challenges

See more about MusicaNova Orchestra of Scottsdale at
www.MusicaNovaAz.org
Fritz Reiner once said that the most important job a conductor has is programming. I think that few people outside of the business-and I include many musicians in this category-have any idea what we go through trying to choose a season. At the risk of acting like I feel sorry for myself, the problems I have with the MusicaNova Orchestra are especially acute, because the parameters for choice are narrow. I want to choose, at the least, music that has been neglected in the Phoenix Metropolitan Community. I also want to have most of the music to be at least somewhat unfamiliar to the average concert goer. On the other hand, I want the music to be immediately appealing, because this may be the only chance most of the audience will ever have to hear a lot of the music we perform. And with a small season, the choices become extremely critical. If I had a bigger season I would unquestionably add some more challenging music as a kind of educational mission, but I do not feel we have enough programs to do that effectively.

The parameters are narrow, but the choice of music possible is huge. Although, as I always say, 90% of neglected music richly deserves its obscurity, there is still a huge treasure trove of great music that hardly anyone knows. One of the joys of YouTube is seeing some music that no one knew "go viral". This has recently happened to the piece with which we will open the 2010-2111 season. Jon Leifs "Hekla" has over 25,000 hits for a recording-audio only- of Leif Segerstam's recorded performance of this work. And this is a piece that richly deserves all the attention it can get. In fact it richly deserves to be widely performed everywhere, and it is sign of the disconnect between the concert world and the internet world that our performance will be the first one of this masterwork since the YouTube video went up. Jon Leifs is simply one of the most intriguing, original and remarkable composers of the 20th century. He sounds like no one else, and everyone who has listened to Hekla-and I have personally sent many people to the YouTube video-comes away astounded. This is amazing music.

And it has amazing requirements-the percussion section includes iron chains, tuned rocks, anvils, hammers, both on stage and off-and I must say that no amount of listening to the low quality YouTube video-or even listening to a recording-can come close to the impact of such music in a concert hall, when it is coming at you from different points in the house and from backstage. And the visual of the multiple percussionists must be astounding.

So I think we can say that we get the season off with a bang! I will be blogging more on some of the other intriguing offerings we have this year, but I thought there is no better way to introduce the season than
this. If you don't respond to power of Hekla,then you are probably not breathing.