By Montague Gammon III
Veer Magazine
Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s Brahms and Dvořák with Thomas Wilkins November concert features “music that is going to make you feel better about yourself at the end of the evening,” says the VSO’s Principal Guest Conductor Wilkins, who will be on the podium.
It’s actually a tripartite program, beginning with French composer Maurice Ravel’s self-orchestrated, fairy tales linked, Ma Mère l’Oye (trans: Mother Goose, using an archaic spelling of Oie/Oye, ca. 17-20 minutes). Originally composed in 1910 as a five part, four hand piano duet for 6 and 7 year old Mimi and Jean Godebski, the work was orchestrated by Ravel a year later.
Next on the program is a piece about the same length as the Ravel, Johannes Brahms’ choral work Schicksalslied (“Song of Destiny”), Op. 54, composed over the years 1868-71. Brahms was inspired to write this upon reading a poem titled “Hyperions Schicksalslied,” by the German philosopher and romantic poet Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin. Hyperion, in Greek mythology, was one of the 12 Titans who preceded the more well known Greek gods. Sometimes he’s the personification of the sun, or, in Hamlet for example, an exemplar of male beauty.
Antonín Dvořák ‘s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70, B. 141 (1885) wraps up the program with a truly great composition. It takes the listener on such an emotional journey that is it hard to realize, when it ends, that fully forty minutes have passed since it began.