From left, Music School Festival Orchestra violists Mateo Calderon, Gordan Liu, Isabel Aronin, Diego Mieres, Lillianna Wodzisz, Sarah Spitzer, David Lawrence, Victoria Goettel and Claire Draney stand with their violas July 21 in Fletcher Music Hall.
CODY ENGLANDER
Staff Writer
In preparation for their final performance of the summer, the violists of the Music School Festival Orchestra reflected on their performance of Les Mamelles de Tirésias earlier this season. For the instrumentalists, the collaborative piece with Chautauqua Opera Conservatory resonated artistically.
“In the opera, there’s a scene where all the babies show up, so the violas get into the pit before the show even starts, and we start quoting the baby’s entrance to each other, yelling, ‘Papa!’” Victoria Goettel, one of the violists, said. “[A baby] started speaking in English; he has a whole monologue.”
The MSFO’s season finale will take place at 8 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater, set to perform Manuel de Falla Suite No. 2 from The Three Cornered Hat conducted by the David Effron Conducting Fellow Michelle Bushkova and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, conducted by Artistic Director of the MSFO Timothy Muffitt.
The violists, the smallest of the string section, are a tight-knit group composed of Isabel Aronin, Amelia Branch, Mateo Calderon, Claire Draney, Goettel, David Lawrence, Gordan Liu, Diego Mieres, Sarah Spitzer and Lillianna Wodzisz under the instruction of Lynne Ramsey. Despite only having 10 performers, the section’s music far exceeds their numbers.
“We have at least three or four bars [every performance] when we can release into the sound, put our arms into the strings,” Goettel said. “We all have had a similar pedagogy, so we know how to bring it to the max together.”
At the beginning of the summer, the section meshed quickly, which Aronin noted as crucial to their team-building process.
Musical School Festival Orchestra violist Isabel Aronin rehearses July 21 in Fletcher Music Hall.
“During one of the first rehearsals we did, the maestro Timothy Muffitt brought up how people weren’t clapping for each other,” Aronin said. “After he brought that up, our section has been the one [cheering] the loudest.”
Before their Chautauqua summer, some members of the section knew each other; Aronin, Calderon and Mieres attended the University of Michigan, while Lawrence, Draney and Wodzisz were all in the same undergraduate program at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Their camaraderie prior to the MSFO has allowed their performances at Chautauqua to flourish, creating a foundation of trust and understanding during their performances.
“We all were very excited to meet each other, then actually did meet each other, then it really just worked,” Wodzisz said.
The section and entire festival go through a monumental amount of music throughout the summer, with a tight turnaround. Sometimes the volume of music can give the violists a wide repertoire. Other times, it turns into a learning experience.
“We see a lot of music; it’s nice, though,” Calderon reflected. “One time, I thought I played ‘Pulcinella’ before, so I didn’t practice it before rehearsal. When I stepped up to play it for the first time, [I realized] I had not. Everyone asked, ‘What are you going to do?’ I said, ‘I’m going to feel it.’ I did not.”
While the turnarounds are tight, the young artists are able to appreciate and resonate with the music they’ve played, whether it’s an opera with a talking baby or an orchestral classic.
“I really love Romeo and Juliet, there’s so many beautiful moments in it, and the end is so wonderfully tragic,” Goettel said. “We have this pizzicatos that are like death blows at the very end of it. It’s just great.”
