A glorious Sunday afternoon greeted a substantial Tanglewood crowd for a novel, interesting, and varied concert including the BSO debut of composer Sarah Kirkland. The New York Philharmonic had commissioned her Forward Into Light for Project 19, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Snider, one of several women invited to write music reflecting in various ways the significance of that event, drew her work’s title from a poem on a banner the suffragist Ynez Millholland carried in a 1913 parade in the nation’s capital in 1913:
Forward, out of error
Leave behind the night.
Forward through the darkness
Forward into light!
Snider had a number of American suffragists in mind—Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, among others—but she did not write musical portraits of these notable women. Rather, she explained, Forward Into Light is “…a meditation on perseverance, bravery, and alliance.” The score moods suggest reacting to the experiences of many of the bold women who maintained the long-waged fight for the right that all aimed for, to “distill the emotional and psychological contours” of the feelings evoked. It begins with shimmering bell-like sonorities that recur several times in contrast to rich, dense sounds building to climactic expressions. At the same time, the harp’s regular steady ping maintains a rhythmic flow. The contrast between the lighter bell sounds and the woodwind families contrasts with the strong, polyphonic sonorities of the full orchestra evoking hope and assertive activity aiming at an ultimate success. The emotions of the long-fought struggle culminate in “voices raised in unison,” a musical quotation from the “March of the Women” by the early 20th-century English composer Dame Ethel Smyth, who became an ardent suffragist in 1910, even breaking off her distinguished composing career for two years to devote herself to the cause. Snider’s piece is in no way a pictorial treatment of events in the movement, but an ardent celebration of its success, with Andris Nelsons drawing out the full range of the Boston Symphony’s firm ensemble and rich colors.
Augustin Hadelich was born to German parents running a farm in Italy. Music was a major part of family life; his father was an amateur cellist, and two older brothers were already studying piano and cello when he started violin lessons at age 5. Early on he was recognized as a particularly gifted violinist, pianist, and composer, yet his career seemed threatened when, at the age of 15, he suffered severe burns in a barn fire at the family farm. After extensive therapy he coould play the violin again. He graduated with high honors from the Istituto Mascagni in Livorno, Italy, and undertook further studies at the Juilliard School, under Joel Smirnoff of the Juilliard Quartet. In 2006 he took first prize in the International Violin Competition in Indianapolis, which set him well on his career. I remember his first Boston-area performance with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra, made up mostly of people whose profession is in the medical community. At that time, Hadelich visited a well-known burn center, where he inspired young people working to overcome their serious injuries. In the ensuing years, he has continued to perform very widely and to win numerous awards. In 2020 he joined the faculty of the Yale School of Music.
Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, Opus 63, offered Hadelich opportunities for both the melting lyricism of the mellower Prokofiev following his return to Russia after many years in the West and the vigorous, occasionally satirical composer of the earlier years. Many of his works of the 1930s and later seem designed to reflect Soviet strictures on the character of Western music of the time. Hadelich projects the full range of these elements, both the lyricism—first evident in the very opening bars, for the solo violin alone—and the energetic passages that still recall to a degree his earlier style. The slow movement features a ravishingly beautiful slow melody that Hadelich’s violin melts into, while the finale brings a fiery contrast with percussion instruments (including castanets) to bring a whiff of Spanish music to the close.
After his fully engaged performance of the concerto brought a standing ovation and extended applause, Hadelich returned for an exciting and surprising encore: a virtuosic fiddle tune, Ervin T. Rouse’s “Orange Blossom Special” (1938). Hadelich’s own version just about knocked the house down with dramatic fiddle bowing and swooping slides. Its conclusion brought another, still longer, round of applause.
Dvořák filled his mostly darkly serious Symphony No. 7 in D Minor with patriotic gestures depicting yearning for Czechoslovakia’s hoped for freedom from the domination of Austria (despite the fact that the Royal Philharmonic Society of England commissioned the symphony). Dvořák also took as am inspiration and serious challenge the fact that a supporter and friend had recently issued his Third Symphony.
Nelsons drew out the somber passages with dark coloration, elegantly contrasted to the sunnier second theme. The second movement felt wonderfully poignant, as the elaboration of the orchestral writing enriched the emotional quality. The lighter third movement reveled in a joyous dance character, placing rhythmic patterns of two-against-three and three-against-two, characteristic of the Czech furiant. The delicate lightness of the contrasting rhythms rose to the brightest point of the symphony’s expression. The finale recaptured again the darker moods of the symphony’s opening, with hymnlike march. Only in the last bars does the music bring out the sunshine of the major key to invite the audience’s participation in celebrating the moving and rich score.