By BILL ARCHER
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
PRINCETON —
An awesome collection of musicians under the skillful direction of an internationally-known conductor played their hearts out for a loving audience as the National Symphony Orchestra placed a musical spell on nearly a thousand souls gathered in the Chuck Mathena Center to witness history in the making.
Iván Fisher, the principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra guided the musicians through a remarkable performance that started when concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef drew a bow across her violin and the orchestra tuned to her singular note and ended with a thunderous round of applause. It seemed almost as if the CMC stage was built specifically for just such a performance.
It was also a meaningful performance. When he walked to the podium, Fisher turned to the audience and said in soft yet powerful words, that the orchestra would “pay tribute to the victims of the mine explosion last Monday and their families” through their performance of an “Air” by Johann Sebastian Bach.
The orchestra performed the selection with passionate humility. The entire selection seemed to last only a few moments, but as the lingering strains of violins faded, Fisher sharply aimed his baton in the direction of the percussion section, and a single snare drum cracked a military-style roll. The orchestra stood and began performing Frances Scott Key’s “Star-spangled Banner,” in the crisp allegro pace that only the National Symphony Orchestra could perform.
From that moment forward, the maestro and his orchestra owned the audience as they lavishly applauded at every break in the movements of Leonard Bernstein’s decidedly urbane dance episodes from “On the Town,” as well as their performance of Mozart’s “Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504, (”Prague”).
During intermission, Lourdes Karas, executive director of the Appalachian Education Initiative based in Morgantown, said that the performance of Bach’s “Air” wasn’t in the original concert plan, but said Fischer added it to the performance in Wheeling and decided to make it part of each performance in the state.
Nigel Boon, director of Artistic Planning for the National Symphony Orchestra explained that Bach’s “Air” is titled “Orchestral Suite #3 in D major,” but Boon also noted that the “Air Movement” when played by a solo violinist is called, “Air on the G String.”
“He knows what he’s talking about and he can tell it to you in seven languages,” Randall Reid-Smith said, commenting on Boon’s knowledge of classical music. Reid-Smith, commissioner of the West Virginia Division of Culture and History was the force behind arranging to bring the National Symphony Orchestra of the state for the American Residency program.
Gary Brooker who wrote the music for Procul Harum’s hit song, “Whiter Shade of Pale” said in a recent interview that a few bars of “Air on the G String” inspired the music he wrote to accompany Keith Reid’s lyrics to the song.
“I still can’t believe we are watching this performance in Princeton, W.Va.,” Marquetta Mathena said. “Forty years ago, if you would have told me this would have been possible, I wouldn’t have believed it. But it is true and it is happening.”
Marquetta and her husband, Charlie Mathena were the driving forces behind developing the CMC, a performing arts center that is named in memory of their son, Chuck Mathena who died in an automobile accident in March of 1992. Chuck Mathena had a great love for the performing arts, and his parents honored their son’s passion for the arts by working to raise funds in the community and establish the CMC.
Part two of the concert had all the passion and fire of part one, as well as some truly electrifying musical performances. Bar-Josef performed a solo for a few measures in the “Adagio” movement of Dvorák’s “Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88” that was soulfully sweet, and Fisher seemed to physically draw the notes from his musicians later in the same movement as both sides of the orchestra rocked and swayed in their seats as though they were part of a living wave of humanity.
Fisher and the orchestra performed the fanfare from “Symphony No. 8” in a tantalizingly powerful way while the audience traded each musical measure with a corresponding measure of appreciation. The sustained applause brought Fisher back for a second bow, and the excitement continued as the musicians visited with the public during a reception following the performance.
Sunday’s performance marked the fifth concert during the first six days of the orchestra’s “American Residency in West Virginia” that started in Wheeling on April 5, and has included stops in Morgantown, Glenville and Huntington.
The orchestra was set to perform a chamber music concert at Tamarack Sunday night, and participate in an artistic exchange at the RiffRaff Arts Collective in Princeton.
The orchestra will be participating in a variety of community outreach programs starting at 7:30 a.m., today at Capital High School include an in-school ensemble this afternoon at 12:50 p.m., at Woodrow Wilson High School in Beckley. The orchestra will hold another in-school ensemble at 11 a.m., on Tuesday at Princeton Senior High School.
– Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com
