Spring Classics

PEI Symphony Orchestra

by Ivy Wigmore

Classical music is not for sissies. In his introduction to the PEI Symphony Orchestra’s final performance of the season, Conductor James Marks announced that the concert would be a celebration of the power of music to express emotion. He went on to say that music, perhaps more than any other medium, has that capacity. I would argue further that classical music, perhaps more than any other genre, represents the extremes of human emotions at their purest, sometimes rawest. Ravishing romance, joy and transcendence but also grief, fear, and the almost overwhelming stirring, the coming to life and attendant pain that prompted T.S. Eliot to proclaim April “the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” Music insinuates itself into the gaps in the insulation that keeps us at one remove and in doing so leaves us vulnerable to the intensity of full experience. Even words—for all their power—are blunt instruments in comparison to music, and have to take an oblique approach—through poetry, perhaps—to put into words (as another poet said) what can’t be expressed in words.

Autumn Colours
PEI Symphony Orchestra with Paul Bernard

by Ivy Wigmore

The 42nd season of the PEI Symphony Orchestra got underway October 18th with “Autumn Colours.”

The afternoon kicked off with Aleksandr Glazunov’s Autumn. Autumn is the final tableau in The Seasons, an allegorical ballet. The first movement, Bacchanal, is a wild dance celebrating the year’s end. From that perspective, the music reviews winter, spring and summer. Revisiting the seasons amid Autumn seems particularly appropriate here, where on any given October day you might wake up to frost on the pumpkins and then, throughout the day, experience precipitation running the gamut from rain to sleet to snow. All of which is blown around, along with leaves of various colours, under threatening clouds and patches of blue. But every so often, the sun peeks through with just enough warmth to remind you that there was a summer. After the other seasons have been put to bed and the revelry completed, leaves fall, the skies darken and stars appear.

Angèle Dubeau and La Pietà

by David Helwig

As I sat waiting for the concert to begin I glanced at the Stations of the Cross, the altar, the religious statues, and reflected that they will soon be gone. The Roman Catholic diocese has announced that the William Critchlow Harris church at Indian River is to be deconsecreated. Attending one of the concerts that have become a significant feature of summer on PEI, I couldn’t help speculating on the future of the church and the Indian River Festival. Presumably there will be an attempt to purchase the church for the Festival, but the costs of purchase and upkeep will inevitably pose problems for a festival which takes place in summer in a community as small as that of the Island.

Vivaldi 4 Beethoven 5

PEI Symphony Orchestra

by Ivy Wigmore

The final performance of the PEI Symphony Orchestra started out with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. As the first familiar notes sounded, I thought to myself: No surprises here. However, much of the power of music derives from expectation and subversion of that expectation. And in this case, my expectations were way off the mark. Although I may have heard the concertos a time or two before, the performance was positively thrilling, seeming infused with the same awesome creative force that drives the seasons themselves.

Between Sun and Snow

PEI Symphony Orchestra

by Ivy Wigmore

Between Sun and Snow, the third of the PEI Symphony Orchestra’s performances this season, offered an unusually spicy mixture, thoughtfully blended up to combat those long-winter blues, reassuring us that there’s warmth in our future. Perhaps even some heat.

PEI Symphony Orchestra with Chucky Danger

by David Malahoff

PEI Symphony Orchestra with Chucky Danger Band An empty rock drum kit sits centre stage as conductor James Mark and the PEI Symphony Orchestra launch into “Overture to Gypsy,” from the musical based on the life of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. After dispatching enthusiastic snippets from Gypsy’s most famous song, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and sliding into convincing burlesque house musical raunchiness, the overture ends. Next, in somber contrast, comes a moving rendition of the hymn-like “Overture to Finladia” by Jean Sibelius.