By Daniel Buckwalter
(#CommonManAtTheSymphony)

The opening concert of this season’s Eugene Symphony Orchestra Masterworks Series was a feast for the eyes as well engaging to the ear.

If you can forgive a quick reference to public television’s popular children’s program, Sesame Street, this concert was brought to you on Oct. 15 in the Hult Center’s Silva Concert Hall by the cheerful color yellow, the dynamic and powerful color red and the creativity and warmth of the color orange

It featured Igor Stravinsky’s “Suite from The Firebird” (1919 version), Anna Clyne’s three-movement “Color Field” (Yellow, Red, Orange) and Antonín Dvořák’s glorious Symphony No. 9 in E minor (“From the New World”).

Also, it featured a new jacket for Alex Prior to wear on the podium. Eugene Symphony’s conductor and artistic director is known for the bold colors he wears, and the magnetic yellow, red and orange silk jacket — tailor made and a gift to him from the Eugene Weavers’ Guild — was definitely eye-catching.

(I’ve said it before and I will say it again: I am fashion challenged, so I will trust Prior when, before the orchestra played “Color Field,” he turned to the nearly sold out audience and said of the Weavers’ Guild, “They understand me.”)

The audience certainly understood the music. Stravinsky’s ballet — a tale of discovering divine intervention and the folly of relentlessly chasing it — opened the program.

It was followed by Clyne’s vibrant three-movement “Color Field,” composed in 2020 and inspired by Mark Rothko’s 1961 abstract painting “Orange, Red, Yellow.”

As for Dvořák’s masterpiece, what more can be said about this renowned symphony that already has not been studied or commented on? Nothing, really. It’s the third time this calendar year I’ve heard the piece live, and I’m out of superlatives.

Instead, I will focus on the spiritual second movement. I look forward to it, always, for its unique ability to bring a profound stillness inside me.

That’s especially true near the end, when the number of strings players who are engaged softly fade out three times before the movement comes to its lush ending. This moment in this movement is prayerful, and hearing it, I always close my eyes, bow my head, and smile.

It’s the perfect symphony for the colorful autumn season.

Note: The Eugene Symphony Orchestra’s Masterworks Series season-opening concert will be broadcast at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 12, on KWAX  radio at 91.9 FM.