By Daniel Buckwalter
(#CommonManAtTheSymphony)
April has been a particularly hard month for the classical music community in Eugene-Springfield.
On April 7, bassist Josef Ward, a temporary appointment with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra who also was scheduled to play with the Oregon Mozart Players and the Eugene Concert Choir Orchestra, died in a motor vehicle accident in Eugene. He was 30.
Then, on April 23, Sharon Schuman — the deeply respected violinist with the symphony, Oregon Mozart Players, and the Oregon Bach Festival, among others, and also a co-founder of Chamber Music Amici — was killed while jogging in the Amazon Creek area in Eugene. Reportedly, a motorist lost control of his vehicle, and the vehicle struck Schuman on a jogging path. She was 79.
The startling thing for me is the suddenness and randomness of it all. I last saw Schuman perform with Amici on the Wildish Theater stage on April 14. Before that she was storytelling for children at the Eugene Public Library as part of an Oregon Mozart Players production. She was her usual buoyant self each time, and those will be my everlasting memories of her.
Into this sadness Francesco Lecce-Chong stepped to the podium on April 24 in the Hult Center’s Silva Concert Hall to conduct the Eugene Symphony Orchestra in Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land Suite.
But it was after intermission, when the Eugene Symphony Chorus and soloists took the stage with the symphony, that an impromptu memorial, of sorts, took place with Lecce-Chong conducting Johannes Brahms’ A German Requiem.
The program, of course, was etched in stone roughly a year ago, but as one orchestra member noted a couple of days after the performance, “It was weirdly appropriate.” It just felt right for this particular month, calling to mind T.S. Eliot’s reference to April as “the cruelest month” in his poem, The Waste Land.
A German Requiem, one of the great choral works of the Romantic era, was composed by Brahms between 1865 and 1868. A Lutheran, though not orthodox, Brahms focused on the living who are left behind, the mourners, rather than the souls of the departed as in previous Latin texts from the Catholic church.
From the opening movement — “Blessed are those who mourn” — Brahms explores in seven movements the complex entanglements mourners feel after loved ones and friends die, ending with a degree of acceptance — “Blessed are the dead.”
The entire work is splendid beauty, worth listening to with eyes shut, letting the mind’s eye roam to days past, to happier times with loved ones lost but not forgotten and well worth the 60-plus minutes of listening.
As if the music and the unique month of April was not enough, the April 24 concert had one last tug at the heartstrings.
It was the final performance for Eugene Symphony Chorus Director Sharon Paul. After 25 years, Paul is stepping aside, and the tributes to her from Lecce-Chong and others before A German Requiem left her struggling to hold back tears. She will continue her teaching work at the University of Oregon.
It was a moving moment for many that night, capping a month that won’t be forgotten. Here’s hoping all of it offered some comfort.
