I had the pleasure of meeting with conductor Kellen Gray the day before he took the podium for the concert program, “Nostalgia and Nature,” in the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra’s ongoing search for its next permanent leader. Maestro Gray is a very pleasant, well-spoken, polished individual with a great deal of conducting and arts administrative experience.
We had a wide-ranging discussion covering everything from the music to be performed to his southern roots and his professed ecumenical attitude toward musical styles, to what he will likely be called upon to do if he were presented with the opportunity to assume a leadership position here in Tallahassee, to his role as Assistant Editor and Conductor Liaison for the African Diasporic Music Project, a repository for the concert works of composers of the African Diaspora, among other things.
He seems quite flexible in thought and adaptable to a variety of situations, emphasizing the need to “be in the room” to affect change and influence the role of the TSO in the community. While Gray did not speak to the audience very much during the concert and the music on the program was not the most thought provoking, it was entertaining and uplifting with some sparkling moments.
The program included the overture “My Home,” Op. 62, B. 125a (1881-82) by the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, the Piano Concerto in One Movement (1933) by African-American composer Florence Price, and, lastly, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 in Bb Maj. Op. 60 (1806).
Dvorak’s composition was originally written to accompany a patriotic play and uses thematic material from a song titled “Where is my Home,” one which later became the Czech national anthem. Even with these national references, the music harkens back to Beethoven in some respects and earlier German classical music, in general. Gray mentioned to me that it was also Dvorak’s intention to poke fun at some of the stereotypical stodginess of some of that music.
Regardless of its background, the music sounded full and bright from the onset and got the concert going on the right foot.
Next up was the Price concerto featuring Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear. While also not a terribly adventuresome piece, even for its time, it is almost a miracle that it was written, given the prejudices Price faced. It’s also a wonder that anyone got to hear it at all since much of Price’s output was lost and left undiscovered until 2009.
The music itself was purposefully highly referential and, perhaps, evocative, connoting many southern idioms and presaging other music that used similarly vernacular references like Gershwin’s opera “Porgy & Bess” (1935). Pairing the Dvorak and Price works made good sense since both used familiar (to some) idioms to build their works around.
Goodyear’s playing was impeccable, handling the (too) many instrument-spanning arpeggios with ease.
After the audience rose to a standing ovation, Goodyear, who is also a composer, treated us to an impromptu curtain call, playing a part of one of his own pieces, “Callaloo – Caribbean suite for piano and orchestra,” an abstract treatment of Trinidadian music. From a harmonic and textural standpoint, it was the most involved piece on the program and Mr. Goodyear played it with fire.
The second half of the program was all Beethoven. His Symphony No. 4 is often regarded as the “fun” Beethoven (especially the outer movements); the “dancing” Beethoven (the third movement). It’s all relative. That said, it is a generally amiable work, making it a great fit with the other two pieces, both of which were relatively light fare. The Symphony was played with great energy.
I was taken with Gray’s somewhat slow conducting of the piece’s ominous opening. Doing so allowed for the faster music that followed to seem that much more energetic, something that carried through all four movements. I wish, though, that the same care was applied to the dynamics throughout, especially the softer ones. Those never seemed to be quite soft enough.
Consequently, the louder dynamics didn’t have quite the effect that they might have had. Also, intonation in some of the more exposed textural moments was sometimes a little ragged. These are minor details, though. The piece certainly came across as the great music it is.
In fact, Gray’s conducting made the orchestra’s performance seem effortless for the most part throughout the concert, despite how hard they all worked. The TSO’s output on this night mostly reflected Maestro Gray’s own personal polish.
At the end, the audience again gave the orchestra and its leader another standing ovation and seemed pleased to have experienced the buoyancy that most of the music was intended to impart.
David Lipten, Ph.D., is a Tallahassee-based, award winning composer whose music has been performed throughout the US in such venues as Carnegie Hall and at the Aspen Music Festival, as well as in Paris, Athens, and, most recently, in Lviv, Ukraine.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Fourth conductor candidate leads Tallahassee Symphony with polish | Concert Review
Reporting by David Lipten / Tallahassee Democrat
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