If you believe music can summon courage, you ought to have been in the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College on Sunday night.
In the final concert of the 2021 Music in the Mountains Festival, the orchestra made good on its theme: Triumphant and Resilient. Conductor Guillermo Figueroa led the 47-strong ensemble in three works: Beethoven’s “Egmont Overture,” Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C minor and the world premiere of “Tone Poem of Triumph,” by American composer Nan Schwartz.
The program concluded the festival’s 35th anniversary season and lifted concertgoers out of a 15-month-long pandemic cave to exhilarating emotional heights.
Opening with Beethoven’s dramatic overture to a martyred hero from a long-forgotten European war, the orchestra performed with nuanced precision. Figueroa conducted without a score, something no audience should ignore, and brought out the muscular nature of the work as well as its intense delicacy. Filled with surges, reverses and breathtaking full stops, the overture unspooled in only 9 minutes, paving the way for a new work on the musically dramatic spectrum.
“Tone Poem of Triumph,” Schwartz’s 13-minute orchestral suite, echoed the rise-and-fall narrative story lines of 19th century tone poems but had enough modern elements, jazz syncopations and percussive structures, to place it in our century.
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Festival Board President Gordon Thomas introduced three local leaders who commented on the crisis of the past year: Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce Jack Llewellyn, City Manager José Madrigal and Fort Lewis College Provost Cheryl Nixon. Each spoke about communal survival and renewal including the return of Music in the Mountains.
Llewellyn recalled other civic traumas, the Gold King Mine spill, the 416 Fire and the global pandemic, ending with high praise for the role of music.
“Music propels us to move forward,” he said, thanking the festival for perseverance.
Madrigal discussed the short time he has been here and praised the resilience of the community in general, asking “What can we do better?” to move forward.
Nixon underscored how delighted the college is to host the festival and summarized a “chilling” year on campus. She expanded on student-centered education and noted how students came up with the idea of creating a “Community of Care.”
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Making a rainy-season Mary Poppins entrance for her preconcert lecture, Linda Mack Berven chose a music-print umbrella and dress accessorized with a keyboard scarf and stockings, musical instrument earrings and a pair of goggles.
Known for her breezy, light-hearted talks, Mack Berven brought along her prop box. For the Beethoven section, she plucked out a rubber chicken for a Bach joke and handcuffs for the imprisoned Egmont.
For the world premiere segment, Mack Berven wore a black sequined jacket and summarized Nan Schwartz’s California biography. She grew up with studio musician parents, worked in the movie and television industry, and added symphonic literature, especially with the festival commission.
Mack Berven slipped on a German beer hall sweatshirt to discuss Brahms’ youthful piano playing before he became a serious composer of symphonies, songs and chamber music. Hoisting a beer mug and cigar, Mack Berven dramatized Brahms’ years of compositional frustration by tossing crumpled sheets of music behind her.
Fans in the audience cheerfully responded every time Mack Berven cued her signature line: “What a guy.”
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The bottom line: Four of the 19 scheduled Music in the Mountains events were sold out, exempting the free mobile concerts. Concert Hall capacity was set at 75% or 462 seats because of COVID-19 restrictions. With 418 tickets sold for the finale, it was close to being sold out.
At the beginning, one voice, (flutist Jean Larson Garver) introduced a section shimmering with the feeling of daybreak. Then the musical journey began, encountering obstacles, struggles, menace and moments of short-lived triumph.
At least eight discernable sections marked changes in texture or tempo, and more solo voices entered briefly piercing the shifting moods. Bold sections marked by rhythmic pizzicato or a brass choir plateau contrasted with quiet moments of respite. Throughout, a distinct, rising-line motif could be heard, a gesture that was voiced by various solos and strings. Three forceful brass fanfares supported by a persistent pulse in the timpani (John Pennington) surged toward a sustained, climactic chord.
No wonder the audience erupted in enthusiastic applause. Figueroa acknowledged the composer in the audience.
Schwartz’s suite carried Beethoven’s drama forward and also paved the way musically for Brahms big, unquestionably stirring symphony that completed the program.
After intermission, Figueroa briefly told the story of Brahms’ multidecade struggle with his first symphony and prepared the audience for a 46-minute marathon. Again, conducting from memory, Figueroa took hold of the massive work and led the orchestra with clarity and control.
The heroic, fourth-movement theme is familiar to many, and early on, the festival’s four-man trombone battery introduced it in a big chorale. Other voices echoed its stately pronouncement later, especially the strings, led by concertmaster Emmanuelle Boisvert.
At the end, the audience outburst was spontaneous and strong, a vivid example of what is called “collective effervescence.” That sociological term, coined by sociologist Emile Durkheim in 1912, has found new life with the COVID-19 pandemic. A moment of communal fulfillment has been a long time coming. Festival concertgoers seemed to express it Sunday.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
