|
On the heels of Saint Patrick’s Day, it’s fitting to blather about the Irish. The Portland Symphony Orchestra gives us the opportunity to hear Celtic influence in the context of music composed elsewhere. Secretly, we all want to be Irish — those go-lucky, Guinness-loving, green-sporting charmers from the land of rolling foggy hills and spuds (like Maine). Last Saturday, everybody was Irish. Why not dream a little longer?
This weekend’s performances feature Quebecois folk ensemble Le Vent du Nord, in concerts titled “Celtic Color and Canadian Clipper.” They play unusual instruments like the hurdy gurdy, a wheel fiddle with a crank; and the bodhran, an Irish goatskin frame drum that can control its pitch and timbre. They perform on March 24 and 25, and on the 26 and 27, they join the PSO Youth Concert series to educate area youth.
Daniel Meyer, resident conductor of another PSO — the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, makes his second appearance with our PSO. He conducted the world premiere of Richard Danielpour’s Pastime, based on American ballplayers Jackie Robinson, Josh Gibson, and Henry Aaron. Maybe local composer Daniel Sonenberg’s baseball opera might catch Meyer’s interest. (see "In The Right Field," by Ben Meiklejohn, March 16). Enough about America, we all want to be Irish.
The PSO starts with performances of Irish tunes and Scottish medleys, by non-Irish composers, and are later joined by Le Vent du Nord. American composer John Williams starts early with "Suite from Far and Away," derived from summary music played during the roll of end credits in the 1992 movie. The listener takes a musical journey, like the movie, from the strongly Irish County Galway to Boston, and onward to the American frontier. What is America without a dash of Ireland?
Next are selections by Percy Grainger (1882-1961), the composer who pioneered “elastic scoring,” a method of scoring flexibly, for variable instrumentation scenarios, keeping in mind similarities in timbres. A dance for concert band with hurdy gurdy and bodhran anyone? Grainger is kind of like Ireland — everybody claims him as their own. Born in Australia, he lived in Britain and then America. All three nations claim the experimenter who used irregular meters, and found inspiration in ethnic folk songs. “Mock Morris,” “Irish Tune from County Derry,” and “Handel in the Strand” will be performed.
The Morris dance, a traditional English dance (blimey! I thought we were talking Irish!) with a jog-trot feel, had dancers resembling the Moors. “Irish Tune from County Derry” is based on a tune published in The Petri Collection of Ancient Music of Ireland in 1885, collected by Miss Ross of County Derry, Ireland. The age-old Irish struggle to wrench free of English domination plays itself out, even in a Celtic concert. “Handel in the Strand,” originally titled “Clog Dance,” was named because of the musical reflections of both Handel and English musical comedy commonly found on the Strand, a London street.
While on the subject of English oppression, who has the most in common with the Irish? The Scottish. The late composer Malcolm Arnold, who composed numerous national dances, left us with “Four Scottish Dances” (1957). Note the bagpipe-like drones in the first movement, and the bassoon melody signifying the town drunk (like the Irish, the Scots like their whisky) in the third movement.
