Hunterdon Symphony

Believing In The Freedom Of Music:

Hunterdon Symphony Orchestra Marks 25th In Style If anyone needed a reason to rejoice, Saturday, April 30 provided a passel. Especially for those people who thronged to the North Hunterdon Regional High School auditorium in the Annandale section of Clinton Township during the evening.

Gorgeously marking its 25th anniversary, the Hunterdon Symphony orchestra once more showed why it is a classical jewel in the county’s crown. With a sweet modesty matching the seriousness of its mission tempered by an exuberant passion for the music and the sheer pleasure of performing, the orchestra members demonstrated why the group has thrived over the years.

It was a grand night for listening; and for enjoying the sheer fun of a live performance by talented musicians.

There was a feeling of electric tension in the air, owing nothing to the weather, as Lawrence Kursar took to the podium after Nancy Roth, co-founder of the orchestra, concertmaster and first violin, finished tuning the string sections.

Along with the featured masterwork, his program opened with two pieces still being decided upon when the concert was first announced. The overture to Mozart’s opera “Idomeneo,” completed in 1781 when the composer was 24, anticipates in intensity his later operas “Don Giovanni” and “The Magic Flute.”

From the perspective of the orchestra, the overture’s symbolism was as significant as its notes; the orchestra performed it at its first concert, with Kursar playing the French horn. He has been conductor for the past 15 years.

An affectionate reading of the overture led into a performance of ballet music from “Rosamunde, Queen of Cyprus,” a misbegotten opera by Schubert that is rarely, if ever, performed. However, the three segments played, marked allegro, andante and andantino, are familiar to concert audiences for their lovely sprightliness, beautifully captured in the performance Saturday night. The ballet music was selected because that initial 1980 concert also featured Schubert’s Symphony No. 5.

What followed was an intermission during which Roth spoke of the orchestra’s roots as the Hunterdon Youth Symphony Orchestra, since it consisted of equal numbers of young people and adults.

Though now performing under a shorter title, the orchestra still has considerable numbers of younger musicians, as was shown when Roth introduced adults who had played in the original ensembles, as well as those who have performed with it for only a few months, including some families with second and third generation players.

They certainly sounded like a loving professional family in the first two pieces, and as they came together to perform before a rapt audience the ninth symphony of Beethoven.

At once the most accessible and one of the most challenging of the composer’s works, the symphony is also one of the most durable. Not only its simple, powerful themes resonate over the centuries; Schiller’s “An die Freude,” the Ode to Joy, has become a clarion call to freedom in recent years. Beethoven himself wrote a modification to the original poem in which he declared “Alle Menschen werden Brueder,” all men are brothers.

Since the music builds force through the first three movements – indeed Beethoven relieves some of the drama by making the third movement and not the second the slow movement – Kursar showed beautiful restraint in guiding the performers to the inevitable pause as the other players ascended the stage.

They were the Hunterdon Choral Union conducted by Brent F. Miller and the VOICES Chorale under guest conductor J. A. Kawarsky. Then there were the soloists, soprano Carlensha Grady, alto Daria Dragan, tenor Steven Snow and bass Glen Boothby.

There are performances where even a non-musician senses intuitively the musicians are giving all they have to give, aware that this moment, this experience, will never again occur in exactly the same way. This was one of those times.

The thrill, the sheer excitement on stage buoyed Beethoven’s music like a beautiful storm over the audience, filling the ears and the heart with his timeless message.

The coda was followed immediately by a standing ovation that carried into the damp spring night. It became pointless to carp over the acoustics that somewhat restrained the choral voices, preventing the perfect balance sought in all performances of this movement.

This was not Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, Milan’s La Scala or New York’s Carnegie Hall, but rather a crowded, warm high school auditorium with its acoustic limitations. But for this one moment, this one evening, it was all it had to be.

It was community. It was joy. It was freedom.      Today in Hunterdon