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"Tulsa Symphony
Creates near-perfect fit on opening
night"
 A bit of history happened Friday
night at the Tulsa Performing Arts
Center: The Tulsa Symphony performed
its very first concert.
"The keystone of the arts in our
city is being re-established in
Tulsa tonight," said KOTV
personality Glenda Silvey as the
evening began.
More than four years have passed
since the city's first fully
professional orchestra, the Tulsa
Philharmonic, dissolved into a
stagnant puddle of bad debts and
disastrous management after 54 years
of operations.
It was 11 months ago, almost to the
day, when Dr. Frank Letcher first
proposed the idea of an entirely new
and different orchestra to be called
the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra -- a
fully professional ensemble that
would employ its musicians
throughout the organization, not
just as performers on the stage.
It is a tribute to the musicians'
commitment to Tulsa that this
concept was put into action so
quickly, because so many former
Philharmonic musicians continued to
live and work in Tulsa after that
orchestra's collapse in 2002.
In fact, Friday's concert was hardly
the orchestra's debut. That came in
February, when it accompanied Tulsa
Ballet's production of "The Sleeping
Beauty." The Tulsa Symphony has also
performed with the Tulsa Oratorio
Chorus, and many of its musicians
were part of the orchestras used by
Tulsa Opera and Light Opera Oklahoma
this year.
Even so, Friday's concert, titled
"Get to Know TSO," was the real
benchmark for the Tulsa Symphony
Orchestra -- the first performance
it could truly call its own, its
attempt to make good on the idea, as
Silvey put it in her opening
remarks, "that an orchestra is not a
luxury but a necessity."
So -- how did they do?
Three words: pretty darn good.
It wasn't a perfect evening, to be
sure. Jose-Luis Novo, the guest
conductor for this concert, set a
tempo for Mascagni's "Intermezzo"
from "Cavalleria Rusticana" that
struck us as too slow. Some soft
high notes from the trumpets during
the "Some where" segment of
Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from
"West Side Story" -- tough sounds to
produce, we grant it -- were a
little wobbly. And one over-eager
fiddler hit one note too many at the
end of the first movement of the
Symphony No. 5 by Beethoven.
Yet, these moments were aberrations
(or, in the case of the Mascagni,
differences of taste). What made the
evening special, on a musical rather
than a historical level, was that
the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra lived
up to its name on the most basic
level.
The word "symphony" comes from a
pair of Greek words that mean,
respectively, "sound" and
"together." That is what the Tulsa
Symphony did -- for all the many
people and instruments that make up
the ensemble, the sound they made
was one of complete togetherness,
remarkable clarity and unwavering
purpose.
That was evident from the first few
moments of Shostakovich's "Festive
Overture." Interestingly, the city's
other orchestra, the Signature
Symphony at Tulsa Community College,
performed this same work the evening
before.
Maybe the best way to describe the
difference is this. Imagine a puzzle
arranged so that all the pieces are
in the proper place, just not fitted
together. That would be the Signa-
ture Symphony's Thursday night
performance. Imagine that same
puzzle with all the pieces
connected, and you have the Tulsa
Symphony.
That might also be why Novo chose a
slower-than-usual tempo for the
Mascagni -- to show off that unity
and cohesiveness, to stretch things
out so that the orchestra could not
simply coast along on the music's
beautifully sad melodies.
The Symphonic Dances from "West Side
Story" gave a number of the
musicians a chance to show off a
little -- in particular, principal
violist Jeffery Cowen, principal
flute John Rush, timpanist Gerald
Scholl, percussionist Steven Craft
and principal French horn J. Bruce
Schultz.
And the Symphony No. 5 by Beethoven
got an unusually joyous reading from
the Tulsa Symphony. The sound of
"fate knocking at the door," as
Beethoven described the famous
di-di-di-dah motif that runs
throughout the piece was played here
less as something to fear as a
challenge to be met -- and overcome.
That, in a real sense, is what this
"Get to Know the TSO" concert was
all about. It has met the challenge
of creating a new musical entity for
the city of Tulsa, of taking its
first steps on what it hopes to be a
long and fruitful artistic journey.
The challenge now is to make certain
that those present at the start of
this journey -- the 1,000-plus
season subscribers, the
organizations that have contributed
to getting the TSO to this point,
the orchestra's musicians and staff
-- will keep moving forward once the
feel-good glow of this "opening
night" has passed, to make certain
that the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra
"sounds together" for a long time to
come.
Click to see PDF Version of article
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James D. Watts Jr. 581-8478
james.watts @tulsaworld.com
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