Friday, November 30, 2012

Sinfonietta at Ithaca College


When thinking about performers at the Ithaca College concerts, one would think it is just the music performance majors that are on stage. This concert is not just about music performance majors, rather, they are musicians majoring in other subjects but still want to keep playing the music they have done throughout their younger days. The Ithaca College Sinfonietta performed their concert Wednesday night at Ford Hall in Ithaca College. All compositions played were from the 19th century written by known composers throughout the world. Anyone at the concert could tell, these students gave up their time every Monday night for something special they could create.

For those who do not know what a Sinfonietta is, it is a smaller sized symphony orchestra but larger than an ensemble. The instruments played in the Sinfonietta are the Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass. Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Trumpet, Trombone, Tuba and the Percussion. The string instruments take up most of the company. As for the musician in the concert, the students come from all different majors. The majors range from TV-R to Occupational Therapy. Like the conductor Dr. James Mick said at the concert, "it is a campus wide orchestra." If one did not know what major the musicians where, one would have thought they where music performance majors. The performance these musicians displayed was impressive for those who are not majoring in music. One can tell these musicians have practiced every Monday for the past couple months and it truly paid off with this concert.

Even though all the songs played at the concert where 19th century compositions, there was one that truly stood out. Suite from The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky was the composition. Having spoke about Stravinsky in class, I was looking forward to listening to another song by Stravinsky. Although the Berceuse and the Finale where the only parts of the composition played, one could here the magic Stravinsky could do in his composition. He made the bassoon and oboe reach notes on their instruments that are higher than what they should play. At the time Stravinsky wrote this composition, an oboe or a bassoon have never played notes so high in their register. When it got towards the end of the composition for the Finale, the sound of the instruments started to get intense and I started to hear weird harmonies. I thought some of the instruments were playing the wrong notes to the composition. Then again, it was Stravinsky who wrote the composition. Stravinsky used melodic minor harmonies throughout his piece. Stravinsky was known for making whole-tone scales throughout The Firebird. As it got closer to the end of the composition, the instruments start to play soft and them become louder in an instant. This is part of one of the aesthetics from the nineteenth century called stratification. An interesting instrument that was added to the composition was the harp which had a constant glissando throughout the Berceuse. This is also another part of the nineteenth aesthetics called fragmentation. The Sinfonietta was able to create a memorable rendition of Stravinsky's piece by using these aesthetics.

When I came into this concert, I did not know what I was going to expect. I only knew there was going to be a whole bunch of compositions played by a group of musicians. I know I did not expect to have non-music majors playing in a Sinfonietta. Not only did they play the music, they played the music with so much passion and joy, it seemed like they all should be music majors. One could only think they are professional performers. I enjoyed the concert very much and wish to see more of the Sinfonietta if they have more concerts in the future because they really blew my mind with the talent they showed on stage that night.

1 comment:

  1. That concert sounds like it was so much fun! And, having a long background in ballet, I am totally jealous that you got to hear part of Stravinsky's Firebird live. I think that this concert sounded really cool from what you said about the way they set it up. What I hear about these groups is that they all seem to have even more passion than a music performance major would necessarily because they have less opportunity to participate in music than a music performance major would. Would you say that's true?

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