I attended the Davidson College Symphony Orchestra’s concert with the Concerto Competition Winners on 10 November 2023. The concert was divided into four different pieces, which was three concertos including a soloist who won the competition held prior, and one orchestra-exclusive piece at the end. All three pieces were accompanied by the orchestra.
The first performance was Jeanne Kim as the soloist, playing Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op.28 by Camille Saint-Saëns. This piece featured the soloist and orchestra trading themes for around 10 minutes. In the beginning, the piece was slow and smooth, as Saint-Saëns pieces typically begin, but it later accelerated while following the repetition the Rondo title would suggest. After the intro, the song developed an attitude that was inspired by Spanish Flamenco.
The second concerto was by Johnathan Wang, who played the piano with the orchestra. Jonathan played Piano Concerto in E-flat Major, Op. 73 by Ludwig van Beethoven. This song also followed the call-and-response format of the prior violin concerto. This piece was dramatic and had far stronger percussion than either of the other pieces, with xylophone and drums dispersed throughout the piece.
Thirdly was Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20 was played by Chloe Wang. This piece, similarly to the first, was played by a violinist and accompanied by an orchestra. However, the technique and sound was very much unlike the first piece in that there were many contemporary techniques utilised by the soloist with European roots.
Finally, the entire orchestra played a piece from My Neighbour Totoro. This was a very contemporary piece by Joe Hisaishi. It contrasted sharply with the other songs in that it was less animated and aggressive, but more mellow and whimsical. However, it was not significantly slower, but expressed more passive attitudes by flowing with less jumps in tempo and octave.
The overall intent of this concert was to celebrate the winners of the Davidson College Concerto Competition and express their skill along with the orchestra ensemble. They were extremely successful. As an audience member, I was able to appreciate the practiced skill and talent of the individual performers as well as the whole ensemble. Insofar, I have attended each orchestra performance, and this one was the one I selected for my art commentary because I resonated with the pieces in their diversity and performance. However, my perspective may have been modified by several prior biases. First, I have had an appreciation for orchestral classical music for a majority of my life and have played the violin for around 8 years. Furthermore, I am close friends with two of the three soloists, so my bias is possible.
I found that this performance holistically and distinctly related to the humanities course. The orchestra format captures the essence of Foucault’s disciplined bodies in a similar fashion to the proscenium theatre. In the ensemble, each stand is ranked in order of skill, and each chair within the stands are further ranked in order of skill, which decommissions the individual at even the smallest level by pairing them with another, with whom they should be performing identically. Musical groups such as the orchestra also are disciplined to collectivise their efforts, which is identifiable at a slightly more macro level of dividing each section by instruments who all aim to perform identically. Further still, each musician is facing towards the conductor, which places power into the conductor’s motions to call rests and times. The soloist falls outside of this disciplined structure, where they face the audience, which juxtaposes them with the rest of the orchestra. In this, their position is emphasised and their sound is more pronounced than if they were located in their instrument’s respective section or if they faced away from the crowd.
Another more abstract connection could be made between patternism and software with music. With a limited amount of notes and thus combinations, music retains its identity as a series (or pattern) of sounds arranged in a specific order. However, a song has a liminal attribute in which certain mistakes like a missed note or tune may be forgiven and the song remains the song, which leaves the essential status of the song liminal ontologically. That is, the song has no fleshed out and clear persistence conditions, which leads the intuition to question remixes, live performances, and recordings in music.
