Hampton Roads’ two most accomplished, most famous and finest (classical) musicians meld their talents April 30 at Norfolk State’s Wilder Performing Arts Center for the Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s “Happy Birthday, Hailstork” concert. JoAnn Falletta conducts seven works by Adolphus Cunningham Hailstork III, PhD, thirteen days after he turns a still creative 85.
We caught up with the peripatetic Falletta by phone on Easter, just hours before she flew to Puerto Rico, to conduct an “all American program with the Puerto Rico Symphony.” (Copeland, Barber, and Bernstein.) “This is a very big deal for Dolph,” she said, adding lots praise for Hailstork as a composer, colleague and friend.
They go back, she said, to when she and Hailstork both arrived here in ’91, she as the Symphony’s new Music Director and he as its Composer in Residence.
She said, “He was writing the piano concerto for us my first year. I was amazed by all of the great pieces he gave us. He wrote it and we played it and what other orchestra has that kind of privilege? To have a great, great composer…just writing things for us out of love for the orchestra…so generous, so cheerful about making music together. It was one of the greatest gifts of my life as a musician.”
Asked about how she ranked Hailstork among all composers of the 20th and 21st Centuries, Falletta said, “He’s right up at the top. He keeps quietly turning out wonderful music. He’s just an amazingly prolific, modest, unassuming genius.”
She remarked on the works programmed::
“‘Fanfare on Amazing Grace’ has been played so many thousands of times! It’s just fantastic; it’s just great.”
It’s a brass heavy, soaring and attention grabbing work that fits with something Hailstork said in an online interview on the Atlantic Music Critic site: He wants to start his pieces in a way that captures the attention of the audience; this Fanfare will admirably serve that function for his Birthday celebration. [4 minutes] …….
