‘Rise’ honors vets with music inspired by diaries
When composer Zhou Tian was asked by Allentown Symphony Orchestra conductor Diane Wittry to compose a piece as an opener for its program commemorating the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, his first stop was the U.S. Library of Congress.
“They have a huge database of memoirs and diaries written by soldiers. I remember reading a quote from a 1st Lt. Quincy Ayres, who wrote that ‘Letters from home are like the heavens breaking through depressing clouds.’ After reading that, I immediately knew what ‘Rise’ is all about: the human spirit rising above this otherwise brutal
entries written by soldiers during World War I, sets the concept for the entire first half of the program.
“I really went with Zhou's concept of using diary entries and letters to set the mood, and followed through with it across the program,” Wittry says. “Between the pieces, Daniel Roebuck will read text and letters from veterans and others, and selected quotes will be projected along with photos on the shell behind the orchestra.”
Each piece focuses on a different war. In “Lincoln Portrait,” one of his most popular works, Copland chose excerpts from Lincoln's own words, mostly during the Civil War period, for the narration. Famous narrators have included Neil Armstrong, Henry Fonda, Charlton Heston, Katharine Hepburn and Vincent Price.
Roebuck will do the honors next weekend. A Bethlehem Catholic High School grad, Roebuck is known for his roles in “The Fugitive” and its spinoff film and “U.S. Marshals,” the TV shows “Matlock” and “Lost” as as Jay Leno in the 1996 HBO made-for-TV film “The Late Shift.” He wrote, directed and starred in the Lehigh Valleyshot feature, “Getting Grace,” due on DVD Tuesday.
Samuel Barber, a Pennsylvania native, was born in West Chester and attended the Curtis Institute of Music. His solemn “Adagio for Strings” brings us into the Vietnam War era, evoked most powerfully by its use in the 1986 anti-war film “Platoon,” starring Charlie Sheen. It was the first time many people heard the piece, which in its original form was the second movement in Barber's String Quartet, Op. 11. It has been played during numerous times of public mourning, including at the funerals of Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy and Princess Grace of Monaco.
The second half of the program focusses on World War II, which was still raging during the gestation of Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5. “It's the most serious work on the program. There's lots of words and spoken text in the first half, but in the second part I let the music speak for itself,” Wittry says.
Just as Zhou dedicated his piece to the rise of the human spirit in times of conflict, so did Prokofiev write that he intended his Fifth Symphony as "a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit."
“I feel that there's so much more to that piece then there is on the surface,” Wittry says. “As the war was coming to a close, he was supposed to be writing a triumphal piece to the people, but I sense an undercurrent of tension in the first movement, and of anti-government irony in the second.”
Prokofiev composed this music in an artists' retreat north of Moscow during summer
1944, while Soviet troops pushed west toward Berlin. He conducted its premiere in Moscow on Jan. 13, 1945. The work is characterized by a rich vein of melody combined with Prokofiev's distinctively harmonic palette.
Prokofiev never hinted that there was a program underlying the Fifth Symphony except to say that “it is a symphony about the spirit of man.” Yet music commentator and author Martin Bookspan, like Wittry, finds “ominous threats of brutal warfare” lurking beneath the surface.
We can judge that for ourselves when we hear the orchestra perform this lofty work.
Steve Siegel is a freelance writer. jodi.duckett@mcall.com Twitter @goguidelv 610-820-6704