By Daniel Buckwalter

(#CommonManAtTheSymphony)

It’s been a year. Let that sink in.

It’s been a year of artistic darkness inside the COVID pandemic with brief — and scattered — interludes of outdoor musical joy in small gatherings. Those small gatherings have only made the heart ache more for the larger, full-throated concerts that have been missed.

So much has been missed in daily life, to be sure, and the arts community in Lane County has scrambled hard to make some sense of it and maintain, too, its relevance to the community.

To that end, a slimmed-down version of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra on Thursday released its third Soundwaves: Concerto for Strings, a virtual concert taped at the Hult Center in February, conducted by Eugene Symphony maestro Francesco Lecce-Chong and found on the orchestra’s website.

This, too, is a reminder that the heart aches for more.

You take what you can get, though, and it is wonderful to see, even on a computer screen, the 24-member string ensemble taking on the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Gustav Holst. Performances of works from these musical titans bookend performances of works by three other composers, all women, about whom much more should be known: Grażyna Bacewicz, Augusta Read Thomas and Jessie Montgomery.

Thomas’s piece (Of Paradise and Light) was my personal favorite. She was the longtime Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Of Paradise and Light had its debut in 2010, and the Thomas loosely likens the work to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. It is beautiful.

It was good to hear the ensemble’s robust play and just see them there, dressed uniformly in their customary black, although it feels odd at first watching them perform in masks and spaced several feet apart.

It’s also disorienting to know that Eugene Symphony — pre-pandemic — routinely sold out the roughly 2,500-seat Silva Concert Hall, and then view this stream and know there is not a single patron in the hall to witness the event.

Such is our world today.

Since the symphony last performed in front of an audience in February of 2020, the Hult Center has made upgrades in cameras and sound equipment.

The results of this work are first rate. You know you’re not there to breathe in the sound and absorb the emotion in person, but the technical work gives viewers a fighting chance to climb the crescendos and walk in the valley of quiet moments. There are no glitches. You can ride with the symphony.

When can the Eugene Symphony come back whole? Caution will prevail, I suspect, but I’m hopeful the symphony can have its annual summer series this year, starting at the outdoor Cuthbert Amphitheater.

We’ll see, but the Eugene Symphony’s Soundwaves series will have more streamed productions coming in April, May and June for its patrons.

And the heart will have to hang on a little longer.

Soundwaves: Concerto for Strings

When: Available online until 9 a.m. on Friday, March 12
Where: EugeneSymphony.org
Cost: No charge, but a suggested donation of $15 per household is appreciated
Information: 541-687-9487 or eugenesymphony.org