Humility and Revelation

This week we saw performances of both the National Players and the North Carolina Symphony here at Chowan.

The Players presented Shakespeare's As You Like It, and as always, I left that performance with refreshed admiration for Shakespeare.

I was also really impressed by the way the actors seemingly selflessly pour themselves into their roles. For the most part, each one seems to seek just the right angle and right amount of energy for their characters. They don't seek to show off talent without regard to the demands of the character and drama at hand. This is really admirable as well, and could prove very instructive for musicians. We are often tempted to over-perform, to put too much or the wrong thing altogether into the musical vessel at hand.

Fleisher speaks of pouring one's musicality and so forth into the musical vessel. His playing also tastefully and compellingly snuggly fits the works he plays. Click here to see Fleisher playing Chopin Nocturne No. 8 on Youtube.

The NC Symphony played many Christmas carol arrangements on their concert. The real revelation was a work by Malcolm Arnold from the film The Holly and the Ivy. Arnold's imagination for orchestration was the star of the evening for me. One passage of particular beauty used oboe solo accompanied by the horns. Another novel passage was "Away in a Manger" played on xylophone accompanied by timpani and other percussion.

The NC Symphony has a great mission of being the symphony for all North Carolinians. They also have a roster of very engaging solosists who appear with them at various locations around the state. Two examples this season are Robert Levin and Marc-Andre Hamelin.

Greg Parker - voice recital

Last night, Dr. Parker (our departmental chairperson) gave a fine recital.

The thing I like most about Dr. Parker's singing is his musicality. He takes care with many musical details that quite a few other singers would simply ignore. In this way, his way of singing reminds me of Murray Perahia's piano playing. Perahia always expresses the music thoroughly, and to do so, he does a lot of things that are hard to do and that other pianists don't bother with. This extra care makes all the difference. We might say it really makes the performance into art.

The most memorable moments of the night for me were songs of Faure and Finzi that are such deep contemplations of love and loss. Those deep moments refreshed my sense of the value of classical music for humanity.

Finzi's set Let Us Garland's Bring continues to impress me in that the music works so well with the texts. I think it must be very hard to write music for Shakespeare's texts that doesn't sound superfluous.

I'm grateful for arriving at fall break with a greater sense of purpose and an understanding of what it means to teach here and how to go about it. I am really pleased with the quality of my colleagues in the music department. Each one offers very high quality work, and I believe that our students have a great opportunity to learn because of the team that has been assembled here.