The Hillsdale College Orchestra tested the boundaries of musical objectivity and presented a concert full of challenging and striking repertoire during their Parent’s Weekend Fall Concert on Oct. 9 and 10, in Christ Chapel.
“I love this tradition of Fall Parent’s Weekend being our first concert of the season, it guarantees us a large and enthusiastic audience, and it sets the tone for the rest of the year,” said James Holleman, the chairman of the music department and orchestra conductor.
An estimated 1100 attended the concert over the weekend, Holleman said.
The two concerts featured junior soloist Ethan Tong, a winner of last spring’s aria competition. Tong performed Paul Hindemith’s “Der Schwanendreher,” a concert for viola. The concert also featured Modest Musorgsky’s “Pictures at a Exhibition.”
“I thought it was perfectly balanced so that everybody got a little bit of everything on the spectrum, from all the way back in Beethoven’s time to Musorgsky and Hindemith in 1935, and then ‘Our Town’ which Aaron Copland composed,” said Tong.
The performance opened with “Our Town.” The piece, which features warm and welcoming tones, is a 10 minute version of his score for the 1940 movie “Our Town.”
“We did it a few years ago, and ever since we moved into the chapel I have wanted to do it again to explore the acoustics,” Holleman said. “It was a really good fit, so I thought it was a nice way to open the program.”
Tong’s solo performance of the Hindemith Concerto featured a smaller orchestra that challenged students. The performance was delayed due to a record number of aria competition winners last spring.
The piece was written in 1935. Beginning on a tonal chord and ending on the resolution of that chord, it features a seemingly unpredictable harmonic experience that challenges the definition of objectively beautiful sound, Tong said.
“It’s kind of like life, because you start life in a pretty stable condition, and then by the end of your life, things get stable again; in between there’s a lot of chaos,” Tong said. “There’s so many boundaries you can push, and so much chaos you can see, and still, in the end we feel like we’ve stayed within enough boundaries that we feel fulfilled.”
The first half of the concert concluded with Beethoven’s “Leonore Overture No. 3.”
“It’s really spirited, bombastic if you will,” Holleman said.
The second half of the concert featured Musorgsky’s work “Pictures at an Exhibition.” The work is an audio representation of an exhibition occurring in early 1874 that honored the life of Viktor Hartman, a Russian architect, painter, and friend of Musorgsky.
“In [the piece] the composer walks the listener through ten musical illustrations from the exhibition, prefaced and punctuated by a Promenade illustrating Musorgsky himself strolling through the gallery,” said Derek Stauff, assistant professor of music, in the program notes.
The concert was the first time the orchestra has been able to perform without any restrictions due to COVID-19 during either the rehearsal process or the performance.
“This was the first time from day one of the rehearsal process that we didn’t have any COVID restrictions,” Holleman said. “We were really just on board with how the college wanted to hit the ground running with students this fall. It was an opportunity to just do the best we can to get back to what we consider normal.”
Looking back on his performance, Tong said he is incredibly grateful for the opportunity and the ability to perform this past weekend.
“I was super nervous for that first performance, I was kind of going crazy,” he said. “I was just really thankful to God for giving me the grace to have the peace and clarity of mind to be able to play.”
