Orchestra takes a grandly operatic turn
> BY ALEXANDER VARTY
As far as audience-friendly programming goes, it’s hard to fault what the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra has on offer for its annual Morihiro Okabe Kinen spring concert. Not only is the ensemble presenting Johannes Brahms’s magisterial Symphony No. 3 in F Major, it has arranged for the return of soprano Mihoko Kinoshita, last seen here in Vancouver Opera’s 2016 production of Madama Butterfly.
Back then, you may recall, our own Janet Smith praised the singer’s “particularly lustrous” voice, and the audience followed suit, giving Kinoshita a tumultuous ovation on opening night. This time out, she won’t reprise the role that has brought her worldwide fame, but she will get to shine on an assortment of arias that are every bit as renowned as Giacomo Puccini’s “Un bel dí vedremo”, including “Mi tradi quell’alma ingrata” from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni; “Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante” from Georges Bizet’s Carmen; and “Si, mi chiamano Mimi” from Puccini’s La Bohème.
As delightful as this combination of a symphonic classic and a rising-star soprano should be, however, conductor Ken Hsieh says that his primary focus is on providing an extraordinary experience for his players, most of whom are just setting out on their professional paths.
“The Brahms symphony is a very tough piece, first of all,” the VMO’S music director explains, on the line from his Vancouver home. But beyond that, he adds, excerpts from the score are often used to test aspiring symphonic musicians. “Sitting on so many audition panels, I’ve seen that this is the standard repertoire for violinists, and for a lot of cellists and French-horn players,” he says. “They have to play this in an audition, and so the piece is really for our musicians to get a taste of what Brahms’s Symphony No. 3 is in an orchestral setting, rather than just playing their parts by themselves. To really know what’s going on will prepare them better for auditions for the professional orchestras, I think.”
Backing a singer of Kinoshita’s stature will also be a new experience for the Metropolitan players.
“Working with a singer requires the orchestra to be even more attentive,” Hsieh notes. “With a pianist or a violinist, you can see the motion of their playing, like with the bow arm or how they approach the keyboard. You can always anticipate something like that, whereas with a singer, when she wants to hold a high note, for example, you don’t know how long she’s going to hold it for. So you have to kind of get a feeling inside for where is she going to land that last note. Maybe her condition might be so good that she can hold that note for, like, 30 seconds, whereas if a singer isn’t really in top form, they might only be able to hold it for five seconds. So it’s much more difficult for an orchestra to accompany a singer—and it’s all about being very attentive.”
The trick, of course, is to make the difficult seem effortless— and with Kinoshita at centre stage both audience and orchestra will know exactly where their attention must lie.