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Written by By DAVID DUPONT Arts Entertainment Editor
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Thursday, 17 April 2008 |
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 What's a birthday party without guests?
That's the attitude of the Bowling Green Philharmonia. The university orchestra is celebrating its 90th birthday Sunday and will have plenty of company on stage to help.
The concert Sunday a 3 p.m. in Kobacker Hall of the Moore Musical Center on the Bowling Green State University campus will feature the combined forces of the Philharmonia and the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. Also featured on the program will be the University Choral Society, under the direction of Mark Munson, performing Antonin Dvorak's "Te Deum Laudamus" with soloists Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers and Kelly Anderson.
The orchestra was started in 1918 at the behest of then college president Homer E. Williams. According to a history of the orchestra compiled by the university, Williams wanted an ensemble to play at college's functions.
Professor Calvin Biery brought together students and faculty who played instruments. It was something of a motley ensemble of about 18. The provisional nature of the ensemble became evident when it went into hiatus shortly after it formed. It was Merrill McEwen in 1922 who brought the ensemble back.
Over the years the orchestra grew in size and stature under the leadership of McEwen and others.
Emily Freeman Brown, the 19th person to conduct the orchestra, said it continues to be a presence on campus, though its service is largely with the college of music. In addition to its own concerts, the symphony serves as the pit orchestra for operas and works with the University Choral Society to perform major choral works. In the spring it provides the springboard for the performances of the winners of the college's competition winners. In fall it performs contemporary orchestral works during the new Music and Art Festival.
 BGSU Orchestra being conducted by Emily Freeman. (Aaron Carpenter/Sentinel-Tribune)
Each of these functions, Brown said, helps the student musicians broaden their skills.
The music for Sunday's anniversary concert was selected, the conductor said, to highlight the orchestra's expanded forces.
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony will get a large-scale treatment with every horn part doubled. The "Adagietto from Symphony No. 5" - written by Gustav Mahler as a love letter to is wife Alma - is "something we could just wallow in the glorious sound of all those string players."
Maurice Ravel's "Suite No. 2 from 'Daphnis et Chloe'" already has multiple wind and percussion parts. In fact even with the orchestra's two percussion sessions joined, Brown had to enlist the services of a couple more percussionists.
That piece is a particular favorite of Robert Clemens, a cellist with the Toledo Symphony.
"It's just a perennial favorite of mine, and it requires such a high eel of precision and musicianship to carry it off."
The concert will be a homecoming of sorts for Clemens. The Lima native received both his bachelor's and master's degrees from BGSU. His residencies on campus though were separated by a decade, so he has the opportunity to play under both Emil Raab in the 1970s and Robert Spano in the 1980s.
Clemens said he arrived on campus as an undergraduate as the product of a very strong music program. Still "the level of musicianship was well beyond what I'd experienced beyond."
Raab, he said, appreciated the "architecture of the music" and had "a deep understanding of what was in the score and helped us bring that out in our role as orchestra."
Brown, who has conducted the orchestra since 1989, said students often remark on the quality of the orchestra when they arrive, and many when they move on to Spano was "very young and very vibrant."
"He brought a very different energy to the concerts and the rehearsals," Clemens said. As a graduate student with ore experience, he worked closely with Spano. "I developed a real good rapport with Mr. Spano. Playing as principal he relied on me to get his message across to the the members of the orchestra."
Spano has gone on to conduct and make Grammy-winning recordings with the Atlanta Symphony.
Clemens said he also developed a close relationship with his cello teacher Alan Smith. "My relationship with Alan was unlike anything I've had with a teacher. He gave of his time and attention with a generosity I'd never experienced before."
The college's increasing ability to recruit top students has been a major factor in maintaining the orchestra's high quality, Brown said.
Sharing stands with the members of the Toledo Orchestra, she said, exposes students to another level of musicianship. "There's nothing like modeling as a pedagogical method."
Clemens said he expects to have the same kind of musical communication he has with any musician he plays with.
"I'm looking forward to sharing the stage with young people," he said. "They bring a whole different energy to the stage." Members of the BGSU Orchestra during practice. (Aaron Carpenter/Sentinel-Tribune)
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 07 May 2008 )
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