Adrian Symphony Orchestra closes Season of Stravinsky with 'Rite of Spring'
ADRIAN — For the final orchestral concert of its 2023-24 season — and the conclusion of its Season of Stravinsky — the Adrian Symphony pulls out all the musical stops by presenting that composer’s groundbreaking “Rite of Spring.”
The concert is at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 3, at Adrian College’s Dawson Auditorium. A cash bar opens at 6:30 p.m. and a Classical Conversation, free to all ticketholders, hosted by ASO Music Director Bruce Anthony Kiesling, begins at 6:40 p.m. in the auditorium.
Tickets are $37/$31/$23 for adults, $35/$29/$23 for senior citizens, and $19/$16/$12 for students, and are available by calling 517-264-3121, online at adriansymphony.org, or at the door beginning two hours before the concert.
“Rite of Spring” began its life, as did the other Stravinsky works the ASO has spotlighted throughout this season, as a ballet score premiered by Paris’ Ballets Russes.
And to say that it created a firestorm at its 1913 premiere would be an understatement.
Conductor Pierre Monteux, who was in the early years of what would be a long and very distinguished career, was on the podium for this performance. Monteux had had his misgivings about the work; having first heard it played by Stravinsky on piano, he declared to Ballets Russes founder and director Serge Diaghilev that he would never conduct something like that.
But Diaghilev got him to change his mind, and so here he was.
The performance had barely gotten under way when the audience started to get rowdy. Boos began to be heard, arguments and even physical altercations broke out between those who liked what they were seeing and hearing and those who did not, and things were thrown toward the stage.
Eventually things got so bad that neither the dancers nor even Monteux himself could barely hear the musicians. Finally, the police were summoned, by which time Stravinsky had made a hasty exit out a backstage window.
While it may well be true that in those days in general “audiences were more demonstrative (and) it was more unusual to sit quietly and listen to the music,” according to Kiesling, the fracas “Rite of Spring” inspired at its premiere has become part of musical lore. And the patrons’ reaction actually had a positive effect.
The work “captivated the musical world,” Kiesling said. “Stravinsky was one of the biggest names, and now everyone was talking about it.”
It also became one of those transition points in musical composition, just as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony had been almost a century earlier. “It set a new bar,” Kiesling said. “It was truly decades beyond what everyone else was writing.”
Today, “Rite of Spring” is a standard part of the orchestral repertoire. Another instrumental mainstay is also on Friday’s ASO program: Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” featuring the return to Adrian of guest artist Dominic Cheli.
Niccolo Paganini, a noted violinist and composer in the 19th century, counted among his works a set of 24 caprices for solo violin. He later wrote a set of variations on the last of those caprices.
Several other composers, most notably Rachmaninoff, then used that particular caprice as the basis of pieces of their own. Rachmaninoff’s effort, featuring a solo piano, has become one of those classical works that people recognize even if they don’t think they know the piece, largely because the 18th variation in particular has shown up in so many other uses.
Kiesling said he likes to program this particular work because it makes use of the entire orchestra and “creates a shorter and slightly lighter first half” as opposed to performing a concerto — which on Friday will make for a good contrast with “Rite of Spring,” the concert’s second half.
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Plus, in this case, it allowed him to bring back Cheli, whom ASO audiences might remember from a 2019 solo recital and a performance of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto.
Rachmaninoff is paired on the concert’s first half with the introductory piece “Umoja Anthem of Unity” by contemporary American composer Valerie Coleman. Umoja is the Swahili word for unity.
The ASO performed another Coleman work, “Seven O’Clock Shout,” last season. After Kiesling was first introduced to that piece by David Kim, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s concertmaster, he started looking at other Coleman works and, once he conducted “Umoja Anthem of Unity,” knew he had to bring it to Adrian.
With its call-and-response structure and the way each section of the orchestra gets its chance at the main theme, “it’s a lovely little opener and very engaging,” he said.
The success of the ASO’s focus this season on one specific composer, in this case Stravinsky, led the orchestra to decide to do the same thing with a different composer next season. That 2024-25 season will be announced at Friday’s concert.
Although there’s one more concert in the ASO’s season — a June 7 performance by the Eagles tribute band Heartache Tonight — Friday’s concert is the last of the season for the orchestra itself.
Kiesling said he’s very pleased with how the Season of Stravinsky went. Between the repertoire itself, and the way it engaged orchestra and audience members alike, “I’m proud of the work we’ve done this season,” he said.
If you go
WHAT: Adrian Symphony Orchestra concert featuring Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” with guest artist Dominic Cheli, and Valerie Coleman’s “Umoja Anthem of Unity”
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 3. A Classical Conversation with ASO Music Director Bruce Anthony Kiesling begins at 6:40 p.m.
WHERE: Dawson Auditorium, Adrian College
TICKETS: $37/$31/$23 adults, $35/$29/$23 senior citizens, $19/$16/$12 students
HOW TO ORDER: By calling 517-264-3121, online at adriansymphony.org, or at the door beginning two hours before the performance
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Adrian Symphony Orchestra features 'Rite of Spring' in concert May 3
