Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra couple to premiere concerto
Michael Rusinek and Nancy Goeres have performed together in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for 21 years and have been a couple for 18 of those years.
On Thursday, the pair will perform the world premiere of a double concerto for clarinet and bassoon by Jonathan Leshnoff.
Goeres, who has been with the orchestra since 1984 as principal bassoon, met Rusinek when he joined the orchestra as principal clarinetist in 1998. Each has performed solos with the PSO before now, but Thursday will be their first time appearing together as co-soloists.
The concerts, which will be recorded for future release, will also feature Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, “Choral,” perhaps one of the best known works in the classical music canon. Music director Manfred Honeck will conduct.
“Walking out onstage together to play a new piece that no one has ever heard is going to be an off-the-charts experience,” Goeres said in a phone interview from the couple’s home in Regent Square.
Honeck approached Rusinek and Goeres, who are not married, about performing together as soloists in 2017. As there is not much music written for clarinet and bassoon and orchestra, Honeck suggested commissioning a new work.
Both Rusinek and Goeres teach and perform at the renowned Aspen Music Festival and School during the summers. Rusinek met Leshnoff when the Aspen Festival Orchestra premiered a violin concerto.
“I think of using historical forms as akin to pouring new wine into old glasses,” Leshnoff said in a phone interview. “I aim to take time-honored principles and pour new life into them.”
Leshnoff, who still completes orchestrations by hand before using notation software, said that his music relies on Western ideas of harmonic tension and resolution. But he has created a unique sound palette in the way he resolves these tensions. The result is music that feels familiar but sounds different.
He approached this commission with “more warmth” due to Rusinek and Goeres’ relationship.
“The first movement is very slow and intense and brooding, and it uses the bassoon’s high register frequently,” Leshnoff said. “The second movement is a scherzo, and it’s supposed to be funny, like a short drunken waltz with the bassoon buffooning along. The last movement is an intense and driving allegro.”
The composition lasts just under 20 minutes and was commissioned in partnership with the Greenwich Village Orchestra in New York City and International Wolfegg Concerts in Germany.
As principal clarinetist and bassoonist, Rusinek and Goeres sit side by side in the wind section near the back of the stage. It is not uncommon for couples to perform in the same orchestra, but it is
— PSO principal clarinetist Michael Rusinek
rare for them to perform as soloists in a concerto.
“Working so closely on a piece like this together, I liken it to going on a vacation with your spouse,” Rusinek said. “There’s no one you’d rather go on that adventure with, but you might argue a bit about how to get there.”
“We were good friends, but I also just loved playing with him,” Goeres said. “That certainly isn’t everything in a relationship, but it helps. To be collaborating on a concerto like this is pretty great.”
“Working so closely on a piece like this together, I liken it to going on a vacation with your spouse. There’s no one you’d rather go on that adventure with, but you might argue a bit about how to get there.”