"West High musicians get Oregon Symphony tutor"

West High musicians get
Oregon Symphony tutor

Carlos Kalmar, the symphony's music
director, coaches Titans

By Barbara Curtin • Statesman Journal • March 8,
2010

To many people in the audience, it looks like the
conductor is simply beating time for the orchestra.
The 65 members of West Salem High School's Titan
Orchestra know better.

Their rehearsal on Friday afternoon was led by
Carlos Kalmar, music director of the Oregon
Symphony and a sought-after guest conductor
around the world.

Measure by measure, instrument by instrument, he
challenged the young players to improve three
pieces they were preparing for competition:
"Bacchanale" from "Samson and Dalilah" by Saint-
Saens; "Nimrod" from "Enigma Variations" by Elgar;
and "Finlandia" by Sibelius.

Daryl Silberman, the Titans' regular director, had
asked the Oregon Symphony Association in Salem to
sponsor a visit by an Oregon Symphony musician.
Associate concertmaster Erin Furbes had already
come in January to coach violins and chamber
players.

But Silberman, a former freelance musician in Los
Angeles and San Francisco, believes in going for
broke.

"I blatantly asked if Carlos could come," she said,
and he did.

Kalmar strode onto the West High stage, dressed in
a blue Metropolitan Youth Symphony T-shirt, his
graying hair flying, and asked to hear the
"Bacchanale" from the beginning.

A low chord from the horns; a sinuous solo by the
oboe player; and Kalmar stopped the music.

"Wonderful," he said. Then to oboe player Daniela
Seare, a freshman, as if he were just making tiny
suggestion: "This is your cadenza. You can play it

considerably faster." He sang a version of the solo
that sped up, then slowed down, instead of sticking
faithfully to the beat.

He started the orchestra again, then stopped it,
looking to the horns. "All together," he said. The
piece started again, with the low chord attacked as
one.

Soon, another halt. "When you get this part — da de
o doo do," he sang for Daniela, the oboist, "go
faster, because our colleagues in the horns are
already dying."

And so on, for 50 minutes, deeper and deeper into a
piece of modest length. Kalmar encouraged; he
sang; he counted with his hands and elbows and
body until he seemed to be dancing. But every few
measures, he stopped to work with one section of
the orchestra, until the music he heard from those
players came closer to what he was hearing in his
head.


Finally, he let the wild dance continue to its climax
and a single, sudden chord. "That was very good!,"
he said with a smile.

Kalmar went on to shorter, but just as intense,
rehearsals of the Elgar and Sibelius works. When the
rehearsal ended at 4:30 p.m., his assistant, Susan
Franklin, tried to get him moving toward the car and
an appointment in Portland. Kalmar lingered to chat
with students.

Advertisement

"There is so much talent here!" he told Silberman
and Karl Raschkes, the district's supervisor of music
education.

For Aida Behmard, a junior in the violin section,
"Just the way he was invigorating about the musical
experience made us inspired to play the best we
could."

And Daniela, the oboe player, said she didn't mind
being singled out. "It was really helpful with the
dynamics, different speeds, sounds, and how to
hear other people," she said.

Silberman had been watching carefully the whole
time, filming Kalmar's lesson, nodding her head and
smiling as he worked.

She could see the students taking in what Kalmar
said; could hear them getting better.

Now it would be up to her to keep that process
going as the orchestra moves on to district and
state competition.

The audience will see her in front of the musicians,
beating time; but that's the smallest part of a
conductor's job.

bcurtin@StatesmanJournal.com