Lucy Gellman Photos
In preparation for a major concert Thursday night — the first of the season — William Boughton leaned in to the string section of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (NHSO), nearly falling from his perch as he primed the violins for receipt of some great, long-kept secret. Half cloaked in shadow at stage right, the cellos took note, a few rogue whispers falling quiet as the section readied itself for the same advice. In the back of the stage, the French horns and woodwinds followed suit too, setting down the coiled, shining bodies of their instruments and wetting their reeds in anticipation.
“Think of it as a statement each time. Or think of a dance,” he said. In front of him, a sheet with Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 beckoned, nearly begging members of the orchestra to get back to it.
Boughton raised his baton. Dvořák stirred just slightly, pleasantly, from 6 feet beneath the ground. Outside Woolsey Hall, clouds were rolling in, pregnant with the rain of a final summer storm.
One decisive flick later, and the clouds had opened. Folksy bolts of fabric and homely, still-refined silks were unfastening from the green-and-gold walls of Woolsey Hall, sprawling across the dark wood floor in preparation for a grand entrance.
Sound filled the room. A decisive bah bum in fortissimo, and a musical curtain was pulled back somewhere. The strings made way for a flurry of woodwinds, the shrill, just-whiny-enough wail of an oboe rising above the musical fray. And as suddenly as it had come, there was a break on the chaos.
Boughton raised his left hand just enough to say stop. Back in the year 2015, members of the Orchestra had returned to Woolsey Hall in its 21st century clothes, a cloying end-of-summer heat filling the stage and drawing sweat from many of them. One critique-cum-benediction later, they would be back in the thick of 19th-century Moravia, charging forth with all their musical might.
Surely, it has been too long — three months too long, in fact — since New Haveners have had a chance at this kind of grand aural transformation. Tonight, that will no longer be the case as the NHSO takes the stage for its first performance of the 2015 – 16 season, embarking on an ambitious year of programs and a new, two-year composer-in-residence program.
In addition to the Dvořák, the Orchestra will be playing Edvard Grieg’s Concerto for Piano in A minor and Jean Sibelius’ The Swan of Tuonelaas, as well as the first movement of the Lash/Voynich Project, a complete symphony by composer-in-residence Hannah Lash based on the mysterious Voynich Manuscript housed in Yale’s Beinecke Library.
What that means for listeners is a lineup that is not only aurally delicious and diverse — after winding down last season with Schoenberg and Beethoven, Bernstein and Ravel, listeners might expect that much — but also totally novel, privileging both canonical and fresh voices in a way that last year’s artist-in-residence program began to do. While the Dvořák s a sprawling, gorgeous narrative that takes the listener all the way from suspense to total delight — and the Sibelius, a calmer, delicious indulgence in woodwinds, the Lash/Voynich will be completely unlike anything the audience has heard performed on the Woolsey Hall stage, leaving an aural breadcrumb trail as it links musical strains to mysterious, still-suggestive medieval text.
That’s enough to make Boughton — all gravel-voiced, constructive criticism aside — nearly giddy with excitement for the start of a new season. “For me the excitement of beginning a new season that is about to embark on both a spiritual and emotional journey where we’re not sure what the outcome will be is (as the kids say) awesome,” he shared with the Independent as he finalized his program notes for the concert.
“Music is for everyone and we come in different shapes, sizes, and emotional responses,” he added.
To find out more about the NHSO, visit the organization’s website or find them on Facebook and Twitter.