By Daniel Buckwalter
A friend among Eugene’s classical music circle was welcomed back on Nov. 23 for a one-night conducting performance, the third and final conductor to take the podium in the Oregon Mozart Players Artistic Director Festival.
Daniel Cho conducted a performance of the Oregon Mozart Players that included works by classical composers Mozart and Beethoven, as well as contemporary African-American composer Carlos Simon.
Daniel Cho took an appreciative audience along on a musical ride with selections from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven as well as American composer Carlos Simon, and Cho now takes on the role of interim artistic director for the Mozart Players.
Will he ascend to the full-time position? Well, it’s now up to fate.
And that’s appropriate, considering that the Saturday evening program in the sanctuary of Central Presbyterian Church opened with Simon’s piece, Fate Now Conquers, a short, provocative composition that draws inspiration from a sad entry in Beethoven’s journal and the composer’s Pentecostal upbringing in Atlanta, Georgia.
Beethoven, of course, became deaf in adulthood, a dreaded situation for anyone, let alone a musician. Simon was impressed not just with the touching journal entries, as he wrote in the composer notes that OMP shared, but with the “jolting jabs” of Beethoven’s composing work that emulate Pentecostal “shouts” of praise, all the while accepting the realities that may “knock” on our door, a theme heard in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.
Speaking of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Major, Cho led the Oregon Mozart Players through just the first two movements of the iconic symphony — in reverse order. The opening sequence of the symphony was played last, bringing the program back to the “jolting jabs” that made the evening fun.
Between Simon and Beethoven was the third movement of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, and, reluctantly to all of us who have followed OMP’s Artistic Director Festival, our final chance to hear violinist Sunmi Chang playing it as well as the violin arrangement to Amazing Grace. That will be missed.
The night, though, belonged to Cho, and it was good to see him on the podium. Music fans in Eugene will recall him as the assistant conductor of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra as well as with Orchestra NEXT.
These days, Cho is the assistant director of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and the music director of the Alabama Symphony Youth Orchestra.
The Oregon Mozart Players will announce its new artistic director in the spring. Besides Cho, the finalists are Kevin Fitzgerald and David Amado.
