Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra ‘22-23 Season Opener

By MFC Feeley

C.W. Davis Concert Hall’s intimacy allows an audience to study the expression on the face of each individual performer. No showy Bugs Bunny himself, music director Eduard Silberkant conducted his orchestra with a passion alternately reminiscent of a dreaming lover and a restrained Tasmanian devil. Concertmaster Yue Sun made her Fairbanks Symphony debut look easy as she embraced her violin. The only conceivable complaint one could make about this performance was the blinding glare of the metal scroll on one of the basses (if you’re reading this, use dulling spray please). Only one cell phone went off during the entire performance, which culminated, naturally,  in a standing ovation. 

Leonore Overture No. 3

Ludwig van Beethoven

Slowpokes take heart! It took Ludwig van Beethoven ten years to complete his only opera, Fidelio (originally titled Leonore), and he rewrote the Overture four times. Meanwhile, his contemporary Rossini composed thirty operas in ten years. So, the next time you’re daunted by someone else’s massive output ask yourself who, in his fifth symphony, strung four notes together that we all recognise, and whose third rewrite opened The Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra’s 2022-2023 season? Beethoven! (Not Rossini)

Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 is not relaxing. Constant shifts between major and minor keys create a mounting tension, and at one point the lead trumpeter, in our case Tristan Hovest, wanders off stage, but not to address a family emergency. Playing from the hallway, his trumpet sounds a distant revelry. The still seated orchestra responds as if the trumpet were an alarm and they the actively thinking mind of Lenore, the brave crossdressing woman at the heart of Fidelio. The grandest moments are the iconic Beethovian passages wherein a singular instrument teases an idea for the entire company to shout back with the orchestral equivalent of  a “Hell Yeah!”   

Symphony #9 “From the New World”

Antonin Dvorak

Bohemian conductor Antonin Dvorak spent considerable time in New York and Iowa seeking to ask for himself the question, “What is American Music?” In 1895, he answered with his ninth symphony (Greetings) From the New World. Though he was influenced by African American spirituals (Swing Low Sweet Chariot threads throughout) his passion for Indigenous American influences dominates this composition.  For its duration, romantic auditory images of the Wild West fill the hall, so it comes as no shock that a quick google search reveals this symphony is featured in well over 100 films. An extremely visual experience, Dvorak’s From the New World fosters a dream state superior to meditation and leaves the audience humming its familiar theme. 

Next up at the Symphony:

Halloween Spooktacular!

Sunday, October 30th 2022