Gabriel Weber
Staff Writer
In a night reminiscent of the Romantic period, musicians of the Music School Festival Orchestra will keep the beat to their hearts — or more accurately, to the School of Music Artistic Director and MSFO Conductor Timothy Muffitt’s baton.
With three “emotionally charged works,” the MSFO takes to the stage at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater, joined by Muffitt, David Effron Conducting Fellow Hannah Schendel and piano soloist Sean Yang.
The MSFO will start with Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a 40-minute feat for Yang; continue on to Samuel Barber’s Second Essay for Orchestra, Op. 17, conducted by Schendel; and end with Claude Debussy’s “La Mer.”
Though Muffitt will conduct the bookend pieces, Schendel will be maestro for Barber’s piece as a result of earning the School of Music’s internationally competitive fellowship position. She will conduct the MSFO in a number of pieces this season, as well as assist for some Chautauqua Opera Conservatory productions.
Studying biology and music for her undergraduate degree, Schendel ended up loving conducting “because it’s both very artistic and musical, but also analytical, logical and research-based,” she said. As she has never conducted to Barber before, Schendel must consider “balance in what line is more important at a certain time” because there are “so many different layers in it.”
“There are some tricky tempo transitions, and there’s this constant triplet against duplet feel, which gives a sense of instability throughout it — like being unsettled,” Schendel said.
While Schendel also described the Barber piece as colorful, there is a “great contrast” between that piece and “La Mer,” Muffitt said. “La Mer” is “tactile in its impressions of the sea,” and Debussy was described as an Impressionist composer, a term artists often deemed derogatory at the time, but which “helps us see a very strong connection between what was happening in the visual arts and what was happening in Debussy’s music,” Muffitt said.
Debussy “was one of the most innovative composers in the history of music and completely reinvented the musical language,” Muffitt said. “As composers in previous eras tended to use harmonies in a structural sense — meaning that there are certain harmonic configurations that would lead naturally to another — Debussy uses harmony as color through
extended harmonies.”
When Tchaikovsky first presented his Piano Concerto No. 1 to the piano virtuoso Nikolay Rubinstein, the pianist did not hold back his contempt and claimed he would only play the piece if Tchaikovsky radically altered it; it went on to become a resounding success under a different performer with the original composition. The piece is both “overtly passionate,” according to Muffitt, and the “epitome of grandeur,” Yang said.
“My view of the piece has drastically changed, almost a complete 180, after I started studying it,” Yang said. “What draws me most about this piece is actually how Tchaikovsky proudly uses a lot of folk tunes from the Eastern European area; one of the most recognizable themes from the first movement is a Ukrainian folk song. These sorts of influences are all over the concerto, and they’re not inserted in a subtle manner — usually they’re very boldly there.”
An alumni of the School of Music with two summers under his belt, Yang won 2024’s prestigious SAI Competition, which awarded him this solo — one he has been practicing for many months. Though solo recitals typically go much longer than 40 minutes, this will be the longest concerto Yang has ever performed with an orchestra. It “adds to the excitement of the challenge that this will be,” he said.
This is a piece that is frequently played in piano circles and is considered one of the more approachable great Russian concertos; it also allows for a “great deal of interpretive freedom,” Muffitt said. However, “once you actually get knee-deep into it, you realize that trying to make any sense out of the structure of the piece, as a whole across 40 minutes, is quite a task because every passage has a distinct musical quality,” Yang said.
“It almost feels like the same scenic changes that are heavily incorporated in Tchaikovsky’s ballets, and so trying to keep some level of cohesion while performing a few acrobatic fireworks on the keyboard is difficult,” Yang said. “Then again, you also don’t want the focus to be solely on the virtuosity of the piece — which does not lack.”
Yang and the MSFO will have two rehearsals together to “iron out any wrinkles in regards to ensemble and togetherness” before unveiling the finely polished work to Chautauquans.
“It’s a shame that I can only be there for a short amount of time, but I’m still very, very grateful for the growth Chautauqua has given me, both musically and as a person,” Yang said.
In saying goodbye to this season of his life at Chautauqua, Yang can appreciate how the people he has met at Chautauqua are the same people who continue to “motivate and inspire (him).” Not only are they “great musicians, but they are also some of the most approachable and humble people” who he has ever met, he said.
“I’ve been hoping to use this opportunity as a way to thank the people in the environment of Chautauqua,” Yang said. “I’m very thankful for mentors like Nikki Melville, as well as people who have hosted me for dinners, and, of course, people who simply give purpose to us musicians in terms of coming to attend these performances.”
