In 1815, when Franz Schubert was writing his third symphony at age 18, Susanna Perry Gilmore’s violin was turning 39.
Born in 1776, the instrument must have stories to tell, stories played into it by countless performers, from its birthplace in Italy, among the likes of violins by Stradivari and Guarneri, to its home in Omaha today. But without words in its vocabulary, the instrument can tell its stories only through its music notes.
As concertmaster, or first violin, of the Omaha Symphony, Gilmore knows only that the violin's previous owner wanted the instrument to be played rather than collected. Remaining anonymous, that previous owner kept any extended history from being passed on to Gilmore. But like the aformentioned symphony by Schubert, no matter how many years ago Gilmore's violin was made, its sound stays young.
Gilmore says of the symphony, examined further in the Q&A below, "We can still be moved by a piece of classical painting with its perfection of form. I think it’s as relevant as we open ourselves up and allow it to be."
The Omaha Symphony continues its Joslyn Art Museum concert series this Sunday with In the Master's Shadow, including Schubert's "Symphony No. 3," Joseph Kraus' "Symphony in C Minor," Joseph Haydn's "Harpsichord Concerto in D Major" and Ludwig van Beethoven's "Music for a Ballet of Knights." The concert will start at 2 p.m., and will be held in the Joslyn's Witherspoon Concert Hall.
Read on for more about the challenge this Sunday's venue presents the orchestra — a challenge "like eating your broccoli," Gilmore says — the natural resonance of the key of D major and how pieces such as Schubert's symphony remain relevant today.
Hear Nebraska: How long have you been preparing for this Sunday’s performance?
Susanna Perry Gilmore: We started rehearsals on Thursday morning.
HN: Is there a set practicing method for the orchestra when first approaching a piece like this? For example, do you always sightread first all the way through, then tear apart sections?
SPG: It’s different piece-by-piece, and it’s different conductor-to-conductor what their method is for the first rehearsal. (Omaha Symphony Music Director) Thomas Wilkins does like to do full readings of pieces. But if it’s a piece not familiar to the orchestra, he might stop or go back and talk about a few things.
Sometimes we have conductors who will a read a section of a piece then go back and work on it before going on. But the reason why we almost always just rehearse the week of a performance is that we’re not actually sightreading the first rehearsal. We’ve all done individual preparation. We know the notes, we know the rhythms. If the recordings are available, we might have listened to a few or whatnot.
That’s why we can condense our rehearsal time and be very efficient as a professional ensemble.
HN: How early do you know which pieces are going to be played at a concert?
SPG: I guess the programming was actually announced for these main subscription concerts as early as last spring. They made the whole year announcement then. We typically don’t get the music to practice our individual parts until two to three weeks before a performance.
HN: OK. Now, I want to talk mostly about the Schubert piece. What is your relationship with the symphony? Have you performed it before?
SPG: Actually, I hadn’t done this one before. There are others that are more common. No. 5 is played more frequently and the great C major one, I think it’s No. 9, then No. 8, the unfinished. Those are more common, but I bet many of the other players have done this piece before. It’s just not one I had happened to do.
HN: Are there any particular sections violins or the orchestra as a whole have had to pore over more than others?
SPG: (Laughs.) It’s interesting, the middle sections of pieces are sometimes the most challenging. The violins had to work harder at the beginning of the middle section of the first movement. Also, the first violins have a very virtuosic part in the fourth movement.
I imagine, individually, we spent more time preparing the fourth movement than perhaps the rest of the piece. It certainly needed more practice for my end before that first rehearsal. It just goes by super, super fast.
But what I think is particularly beautiful about the Schubert symphony is the woodwind writing, the writing for the oboe, flute, clarinet and bassoon principals. They get all of the most beautiful, melodic stuff in the piece. Hopefully, that will come through really well on Sunday.
HN: How would you describe the personality of the piece, and how does it change over the course of the symphony?
SPG: Hmm, that’s a good question. I would describe the whole symphony as fairly sanguine and chipper. They’re not a lot of darkness or tragedy or depressing music.
The slow introduction at the very beginning of the symphony has a moment halfway through where you think things might start to get very serious. Then it immediately evaporates into thin air, and we’re back to very optimistic. It’s a very, very optimistic piece, and there’s not really a slow movement.
The second movement, which would normally be a slower movement in classical symphonic form, is actually an allegretto, so it’s just a little bit slower than an allegro, a fast movement. It’s very simple and charming and almost childlike; that’s how I would describe the opening melody of the not-slow movement.
The third movement is also in a major key, and he’s having a lot of fun displacing the rhythm of this thing that is normally in three, but he’s accenting the last beat of the bar. It’s a limping feeling. You don’t quite know where the downbeats go for a time.
Then there’s a beautiful middle section where the oboe and bassoon play this beautiful, kind of rustic, German folksong. It’s lovely.
And the last movement reminds me of a fast horse galloping in the afternoon. It’s very fast and bright. The whole program on Sunday is generally uplifting and cheerful in demeanor. There’s not a lot of, or really any long-lasting melancholy or emotion. Those pieces are unified in that regard.
HN: Does the key of D major indicate anything in particular for your ears?
SPG: Yes, to me, it’s a very happy key with a lot of natural resonance. I feel that way because two of the open strings, the middle two strings, the A and the D on the violin, frame the chord of D major.
So there’s a lot of open resonance on the instrument we use. It’s not as bright a sound to me as A major or E major, but it doesn’t have the darker warmth of the flat keys. D major I just think is happy and warm.
HN: Tell me more about the violin you play. Do you have just one, or do you have more for certain situations?
SPG: I primarily play on just one violin. I do have another violin, which if I have it on hand and I’m playing in a dicey outdoors situation with bad weather, or if I do some fiddling — sometimes if I’m playing non-classical stuff where they’re a lot of microphones, and the ability to bash into something — I’ll use my less-nice violin.
But the one I play with the Omaha Symphony is an old Italian instrument made in 1776. It’s not a famous name. It’s of the same school, same era, but not big name like Stradivari or Guarneri. The maker was Joseph Odoardi, and I like its tone very much. It has a darker, more complex tone than some of the more modern violins that I’ve heard.
HN: Do you know anything about the violin’s past owners?
SPG: I don’t. I wish I did, and it’s something I daydream about, what stories the violin could tell me. But the person who sold this instrument wanted to remain anonymous, and all I was told when I bought it was that they were a player themselves and were anxious that it found a buyer who was actually going to play on it versus a collector. They came down some in price in order to enable that to happen.
HN: How do the acoustics of the Witherspoon Concert Hall compare with other venues around Omaha?
SPG: That’s a good question. The acoustics are very different from the Holland Center — which is the Omaha Symphony’s primary home — because of the smaller venue, and there’s fewer hard surfaces for the sound to resonate against. Onstage, it sounds drier, less reverberant. But I’ve heard that the audience finds it an enjoyable space to hear chamber orchestra music, which is what we’re playing on this series. One of the things I like about playing at the Joslyn is because we hear each other so clearly onstage, it’s a great challenge to us to play as a great ensemble.
Let me try to elaborate on that. If there’s a lot of ambient reverberations, for instance, different string players might not be totally matching the length of their stroke of a short note. Everyone will have a slightly different opinion about it. But you may not hear that you’re not playing perfectly together because there’s more echo in the room.
The challenge at the Joslyn Museum, which is very good for us — I call it our R&D — is that we have to raise the bar on how we listen to each other and how we match what we do because everything we do will be heard by the audience and ourselves. Whenever we are in that situation, combined with the fact that the repertoire we play at the Joslyn concert series is sort of the meat and potatoes of an orchestra — the Beethoven, the Schubert, the Haydn and the Mozart, and all these great 18th century classical pieces — they require precision and refinement and elegance.
When we spend a week at this venue, we end up playing a lot better and tighter as an ensemble at the end of it. So that’s what it’s like. In some ways, it’s a little more challenging than the Holland, but I think it’s good for us. That’s how I’d describe it. It’s a good challenge, like eating your broccoli or something (laughs).
HN: (Laughs.) That's a good analogy. Now, for a final question, I imagine this is asked quite a bit, but what is it about compositions like the Schubert symphony that keep them relevant today?
SPG: I think that classical music experience, especially in a live setting, connects to us with its beauty and its emotions in a non-verbal way that is very powerful. I think for people sitting there and listening, there’s something extremely visceral in the air, this communication between the performer and the composer and the listener that if it’s played well, it transcends the age that it was created.
It’s the same power as looking at a painting from the same era, from the late 18th century. We can still be moved by a piece of classical painting with its perfection of form. I think it’s as relevant as we open ourselves up and allow it to be.
HN: Very good. That’s all I have for questions. Do you have anything else to add regarding the symphony, any of the other pieces for this Sunday’s performance or anything in general?
SPG: Well, there has been one surprise on the program for me, a piece by a composer that I’ve never run across before: Joseph Kraus, who was a late 18th-century German composer who had his career primarily in the court in Sweden. I had never run across his work before, and I’m finding it fascinating to play a contemporary of Haydn’s and Mozart’s who isn’t frequently played yet had a lot to say.
It’s giving me a fresh perspective on the language of composition at that time that Mozart and Beethoven inherited. We know the most famous names, but they were actually products of the school of composition that predated them.
It’s interesting, it bridges the world of the baroque and the world of the classical era, and it has a schizophrenic approach with sudden louds, sudden softs and sudden crescendos. It’s been kind of fun to experience that, and I think the audience will enjoy it. It’s definitely worth playing just because his name isn’t Mozart or Haydn.
And Christi Zuniga, our keyboard player, she’s kicking ass on this harpsichord concerto by Haydn (laughs). She’s sounding amazing. The best moment of the whole week was this morning, we were working on the Haydn. The orchestra, and all of the sudden, the harpsichord came in, and you just hear that sparkly, golden, happy sound of the harpsichord (laughs). And it’s a relatively new instrument for the symphony, one it was just able to purchase, so it’s exciting to be able to hear it.