By Daniel Buckwalter
(#CommonManAtTheSymphony)

There was a symphony concert May 14, and by the end of it, I was recalling the lyrics of a soulful country tune sung by Alison Krauss.

That might be a stretch, and I’ll get to it later, but the Eugene Symphony Orchestra — under the direction of Alex Prior — closed out its 2025-26 season with a stirring program (titled Forces of Nature) that featured the works of Northwest composer Gabriella Smith and masterworks from Edvard Grieg and Carl Nielsen, as well as the extraordinary rapid fingers of guest pianist Claire Huangci.

It was a captivating night, especially Nielsen’s four-movement Symphony No, 4 (The Inextinguishable), which was played after intermission. The Danish composer completed the piece in 1916 at the height (or depth, if you will) of World War I, dubbed “The War to End All Wars” but solved nothing, of course, so its sequel, World War II, soon followed.

As the insanity of World War I raged, Denmark remained neutral, but the intense grief of people’s inhumanity to their fellow human beings at this moment cast a shadow over Nielsen and, as I would imagine, his fellow countrymen.

It was all primitive compared to today’s computerized warfare. There were flimsy attempts at aerial bombardment, relentless artillery strikes, trench battles and poison gas. It was enough to sink the heart.

Nielsen captured the moments with tender care, especially in the second movement. The soft and distant artillery created by two tympani players (Austin Cernosek and Ian Kerr) was answered in this movement by the sad human cries of the violins, especially concertmaster and first violinist Searmi Park.

To say it was moving would understate its impact. This movement — this symphony as a whole — commands you to sit still and reflect.

The symphony returns to this theme in the final movement, this time with the two tympani players fiercely pitted against the entire orchestra. It is riveting, and, as Prior noted to the audience at the outset of the concert, it is not a clean ending radiating with optimism.

Rather, it is an ending that acknowledges pain and suffering, but it acknowledges, too, perseverance and resilience that Europeans faced at this time to move on, to reflect, to grab at threads of faith to rebuild, things we all must shoulder at one time or another.

And this brings me to Alison Krauss and a song she made popular in the 2000s, Get Me Through December. It’s not a one-to-one comparison. Krauss is certainly not singing of the savage effects of war, but I found myself circling back to these lyrics (modified to be gender-neutral) as a way that I could connect with Nielsen.

I’ve been to the mountain, left my tracks in the snow,
Where souls have been lost, and the walking wounded go.
I’ve taken the pain no person should endure.
But faith can move mountains.
Faith can move mountains, of that I am sure.

The concert opened on a light note with Smith’s Tumblebird Contrails. Smith is a nature storyteller, and Contrails, for me, evoked images of an almost normal day on the Oregon Coast, where you often have to bend at the waist to walk forward on the beach. It can be a workout.

That was followed by Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor and, for me, the revelation of Huangci on the piano. A petite woman, Huangci has an all-encompassing presence on the bench. She and the piano are one, and it was a treat to watch her both attack the keyboard and message it for melodic flair. I hope Eugene audiences will see her again because she is a force of nature by herself.

The May 14 concert was the final concert for bassist Greg Nathan, who is retiring after 42 years with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra. Also, the symphony took a moment to honor Lindsay Pearson, the symphony’s outgoing general manager.