Sawa triumphant in final performance with SSO
Victor Sawa’s final turn as conductor of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra moved the audience to a standing ovation, summoning him back to the TCU Place stage — twice — to show their appreciation.
Sawa and the orchestra managed to produce the uplifting Saturday evening out of two tragic compositions and a modern minimalist work.
The program began with Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture, performed with the Saskatoon Youth Orchestra. As Sawa warned the audience, the story doesn’t end well.
It does, however, feature one of the most recognizable melodies in music, a great love theme that has been reused time and again in pop culture.
The first time you hear it in the 20-minute piece, it lasts only a few breaths. It’s sweet, though tinged with sadness and longing. As the theme repeats towards the end, however, it becomes more frantic and more funereal.
The orchestra skilfully wove the different musical ideas in the work together. Alternately stormy and sweet, it didn’t feel like discrete acts in a play; rather, they were musical phrases in one long, beautiful poem.
The second work was a violin concerto by Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich called Affairs of the Heart.
Soloist Kerry DuWors, who began her studies in Saskatoon, gave a stunning and hypnotic performance. It was less about her own dexterity — though her fingers are perfectly capable of flying up and down her violin — that it was ebbing and flowing along with the orchestra. Some notes were so high and felt so tense it was as if she were playing on a high wire.
In an interview with the StarPhoenix last week, Victor Sawa stressed how important it is for the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra to keep things fun.
The main draw of the evening, as selected by the public, was Johannes Brahms’ Symphony 1 in C minor. Note the minor key. At the outset of the piece, it’s not clear where any fun is going to come from, as the strings wail over foreboding percussion Brahms then introduces a theme that, while nowhere near as militaristic as an actual march, still pulses with restless energy. And yet, there are lighter spots, where the strings sing gracefully. The movement brings to mind an angry 19th century gentleman stomping down a cobblestone street who can’t help but keep noticing what a lovely day it is.
The real fun though, the theme that had a few members of the audience hunched forward in anticipation, came in the fourth movement.
It started with brooding strings, again, and cheeky plucked strings, until the french horns and trombones played just a few soft, low notes, cueing the strings for a hymn-like melody.
A few more variations followed until the big finale — Sawa pushed the strings faster and faster until the brass came in with their theme again, but this time loud and stately and triumphant, like sunshine after rain. Sawa stretched out his arms and stood up tall as he held those notes, savouring each one.
It was a fitting end to his time with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra.