NO SCEARCE: But plenty of Christmas. |
The Portland Symphony Orchestra’s “The Magic of Christmas” performance includes a disappearing act. One composition — A Christmas Memory by J. Mark Scearce — has vanished from all scheduled performances excepting the season debut.The piece, based on the evocative Truman Capote story of the same name is rarely performed. It premiered in 1991 in North Carolina, conducted by Scearce, and was performed in New England in 2002 by the North Shore Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Robert Lehmann. As guest conductor for this season’s “Magic” performances, Lehmann brought A Christmas Memory to Portland for the first time.
Scearce, a former USM music prof and Portland Phoenix classical-music writer, sets to music and narration Capote’s story of a young boy and an aunt who take care of each other. In a moment when they are making fruitcakes and discover the whiskey, a hoe-down occurs in the strings until it all crashes to the floor. As they go out to cut their first Christmas tree, music picturesque of a cold night sets the backdrop with sleigh bells and a solo cello playing Christmas lines. As the boy sets out to military school, a pair of flutes convey the line “like a lost pair of kites drifting toward heaven.” Baritone George Merritt provided narration in Portland’s sole performance.
Although not a medley, A Christmas Memory includes two dozen Christmas melodies in its fabric, not all recognizable, likened by Scearce as “using other’s flannels to weave into a quilt.” It speaks to the Capote theme of friendship and “getting to the meaning behind the religious significance” of Christmas.
The PSO’s communications director, Alice Kornhauser, said it was removed due to insufficient time. The musicians’ union contract requires that “Magic” be contained within two hours on days with multiple concerts. Friday’s preview performance, which included A Christmas Memory, was seven minutes over — the same length as the selection. But even two dates on which there is only one performance — December 14 and 18 — will not include the Scearce composition. According to Lehmann, the musicians and stage technicians will have mastered their routine for a week, and reinserting it on those dates proves problematic.
Missing from the program booklet is a poem meant to accompany the opening piece, “Jubilee” from Symphonic Sketches by New England composer George Whitefield Chadwick: “No cool gray tones for me!/Give me the warmest red and green,/A coronet and a tambourine,/To paint my Jubilee!/For when pale flutes and oboes play,/To sadness I become a prey;/Give me the violets and the May,/But no gray skies for me.” Reading this would enlighten audiences to irony within the orchestra’s jubilant and unified introduction — a longing for mid-spring as days get colder and darker.
Sanctus from Mass in D, a sacred choral work by 19th-century Portland composer John Knowles Paine, is likely the newest music to listeners’ ears, and Alan Silvestri’s Suite from The Polar Express the most contemporary, originating from the 2004 feature film. Leroy Anderson, best known as an arranger for the Boston Pops Orchestra, contributes “A Christmas Festival” and “Sleigh Ride.”
