When the Bowling Green Philharmonia completed "The Overture to ‘Candide’"
Monday, conductor Marin Alsop was quick to praise the ensemble.
Then, she added, "it was a little tame."
Leonard Bernstein, the composer of the piece, was her teacher and mentor. "He
was a party animal."
"A little too polite, that’s what he would say," Alsop said of the
orchestra’s performance. "A little too polite."
Alsop was on campus Monday through the Dorothy and DuWayne H. Hansen Musical Arts
Series.
She put the orchestra through its paces, first on "Candide" and then on the
first movement of Gustav Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.
She sought to bring out the colors of the scores, at one point during
"Candide" urging the strings to be "more poultry like."
The opening bars of the Mahler with flute and sleigh bells, should be "like a
weird memory," Alsop told the orchestra.
Later she wanted the strings to exaggerate a slide from one note to another and make
the notes vibrate. "Try to embarrass yourself."
Later when the first violins had to strain to the top notes on their instruments she
praised them. "That was very good, in tune. I don’t usually get that."
The musicians came away from the rehearsal with praise of their own.
Principal flutist Rachel Woolf, a first year graduate student, was bursting with
enthusiasm. "That was the most inspired time in orchestra I’ve ever
felt."
Mark Minnich, a graduating senior and one of the orchestra’s three concertmasters,
said he was impressed with the passion Alsop brought to conducting, and the way
she transferred that to students.
"It’s not getting bogged down in the technical things," he said.
"Those things fix themselves." Instead she concentrated on the music
so musicians and audience could connect with it more.
For French horn player Tony Cleeton, a first year graduate student who had several
solos during the Mahler, said he was a little bit nervous to have someone as
esteemed as Alsop at the helm.
It was a fulfilling experience, he said. "You learn what to expect in the
professional world."
