By Daniel Buckwalter
(#CommonManAtTheSymphony)
Always, there is a bridge, and a chance to explore and discover. If you’re fortunate, you can cross it in leisure and cross it again in grace.
You can go home.
That idea has been smashed — perhaps permanently — in Ukraine the past month. More than two million Ukrainians have fled in terror to neighboring countries as Russian tanks, missiles, jets and troops have spread the plague of war and destroyed home. Ukrainians have become refugees, and now they begin their journey as immigrants.
The great Antonín Dvořák may not have had the vision of fleeing war’s terror in mind when he composed Symphony No. 9 Symphony in E minor, From the New World, better known simply as his New World Symphony, in 1893. He was saturated with the folk music of his native Czech Republic as well as being newly introduced to Black spirituals in the United States, so he may thought in terms of cultural appropriation, yes, but of the simple love of discovery, too.
For Carlos Izcaray, guest conductor on March 17 of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra at Hult Center’s Silva Concert Hall and who led the Eugene Symphony through Dvořák’s masterpiece, the notion of immigration is different, especially as seen through the lens of the past several years.
Izcaray is a native of Venezuela, and while he may not have fled war, he has been an immigrant multiple times as his professional career has taken him throughout the world and to unique cultural experiences. (Among his many other appearances, he currently serves as music director of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra.)
And he has clearly thought hard about the immigrant experience, evident in his 2021 composition Under the Shadows, An Immigrant’s Journey, which made its West Coast premiere with the Eugene Symphony.
Izcaray composed the piece as a journey from dark to light, from a singular note of apprehension to a grand, multi-layered harmonic sound of life, with its new possibilities, lived to the fullest.
It’s a short piece, only seven minutes, and, as Izcaray explains in the program notes, it’s “a love letter to the orchestra, a migrating entity itself, and in my case a vessel that has taken me on a wild ride across five continents.”
The performance of Dvořák’s piece after intermission was also a reminder of the joy of discovery that immigrants can feel.
Its second movement has always had a profound impact on me, a solitary and reflective moment in the symphony where the immigrant stares in wonder and awe at the new experience unfolding.
The intense — and stunning — pauses in the movement always have me at the edge of my seat. The second movement alone can be heard over and over. (A side note: I suspect that my late father who, before the vise-like grip of Lewy body dementia fully took hold of him, felt the same about the entire symphony. I remember him crying one evening at the recollection of hearing it played.)
Between the two pieces was the flawless performance of pianist Soyeon Kate Lee in Frederic Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which I can also hear again. The South Korean native and New York City-based Lee was simply magnificent.
It was, all in all, a good night for peace at Silva Concert Hall.
