Kenneth Woods- A View From the Podium

From the East Oregonian

Maestro Kenneth Woods’ Swan Song
Seven years after moving to Wales, Kenneth Woods conducts the Oregon East Symphony in his farewell performance

By KATHY ANEY
The East Oregonian

Conductor Kenneth Woods lives for those moments when he and his orchestra slip into a musical realm beyond tempo and timbre into something almost spiritual.

“You can’t make it happen,” Woods said, “but when it does, it’s the ultimate thrill ride.”

Occasionally, he finds himself conducting with tears in his eyes. He’s had plenty of those in-the-zone moments as maestro of the Oregon East Symphony and may find himself in that place again Saturday as he waves his baton in Pendleton one final time.

Woods didn’t quit OES when he resigned as Eastern Oregon University professor and moved to Wales with his wife in 2002. Though his home in Cardiff is 5,000 miles from Pendleton, he returned regularly to Oregon for a flurry of back-to-back rehearsals ending in a performance. He racks up so many thousands of air miles that he knows many airline personnel by name.

The crazy commuting schedule isn’t the reason he’s saying goodbye to OES. Rather, the move stems from the fact his wife, violinist Suzane Casey, gave birth to their first child last year.

“I want something for Sam that more closely resembles a normal life,” Woods said.

Read more…

A view from the podium i'm outta here, oes, orchestra of the swan

For some strange reason, my blog post “Haydn-More Talented Than Mozart” has left some readers with the impression that I somehow don’t get or don’t like Mozart. Far from it- in fact, those who pay attention to these sorts of things will no doubt have noticed that three of my last four works here in Pendleton are by Mozart.

One of my points in that post was that we ought to do away with the notion that every note Mozart wrote was a heaven-inspired nugget of perfection. Haydn was far closer to achieving infallibility in the sense of always being fresh and inspired on every single page.  Pretending that every Mozart wrote was equally wonderful completely obscures just how astounding his greatest pieces are deadens us to a full understanding of who he really was and what his music, at its best, can say.

For all his precociousness and genius, Mozart seemed to often have to struggle far harder than Haydn, which ought to make us all the more in awe of what he achieved at his best. It would have been all too easy for Mozart to be content turn out mountains of attractive but ultimately unimportant music- some of the greatest prodigies and pure geniuses fell into that trap, never quite delivering music worthy of their gifts. Cruel as it is to single them out, and for all that they were fine composers, think of Korngold or Saint-Saens and imagine if Mozart had followed their path, content to turn out pieces that were perfect in their voice-leading and entertaining for the audience, but ultimately, not very deep?

There are certainly works of Mozart that prove he was far from infallible. One of my teachers, now a very famous composer in his own right, spent a week in our analysis class taking apart the poor Mozart Bassoon Concerto so that we would all be able to articulate why it was such a mediocre piece as preparation for spending the rest of the term celebrating the Prague Symphony, which he felt was as close to perfect as music gets (I agree).

A piece like the Mozart Requiem doesn’t just flow from the pen as an effortless expression of divine gifts, it is the result of a genius pushing himself to and beyond the limits of his talent. The Piano Concerto in A Major that we’re playing this week is, in a much quieter and more personal way, a similarly towering achievement.

It might be my favorite Mozart Concerto (the D minor is its only real rival to me). In spite of its major key and the wealth of lovely tunes, I find it a strange and heartbreaking work. It seduces and haunts in equal measures. Of course, the heartbreak in the F# minor slow movement is easy to recognize- I think it is simply the saddest piece of music ever written. But even in the outwardly bucolic first movement there seem to be incredibly powerful undercurrents of longing and uncertainty. I suppose this balance between outward graciousness and inward loneliness has a few distinguished cousins- the first movements of Mahler 4 and Brahms 2 both come to mind, but this movement of Mozart’s seems to be the most perfect and moving expression of nostalgia in the best sense of the word of any piece I know. It is an expression of idealized beauty surrounded by mystery and complexity, of radiant, fragile candlelight in a vast, shadowy night.

Mozart does give us daybreak in the Finale, after we’ve cried our eyes dry in the Andante, and what a bright day it is. Still, he is, by now, too honest and too great a composer to let us completely forget what has come before- there are just enough hints of shadow and sorrow that the ending feels honest and connected to what has come before. Where the great (and similarly heart-wrenching) slow movement of the Sinfonia Concertante is followed by a not-very-distinguished Finale which can come across as a little insipid after such deep music, in this Concerto, Mozart manages to show us the sheer strength of will it takes to be joyful, truly joyful, in a world full of pain.

A view from the podium, Nuts and bolts Haydn, i'm outta here, mozart, oes

Mozart’s Paris Symphony was the first  work I conducted with the Oregon East Symphony. Here is a somewhat pained description of the difficulties of rehearsing what I had thought was a relatively straightforward classical work-

“I was exceedingly anxious at rehearsal, for never in my life have I heard a worse performance. You can have no conception of how they bungled and scrambled through it the first time and the second. Really I was quite frightened and would have liked to rehearse it once more, but there was so much else to rehearse that there was no time left. Accordingly I went to bed with fear in my heart, discontent and anger in my mind. I had decided not to go to the concert at all the next day; but it was a fine evening, and I finally resolved to go with the proviso that if things went as ill as at the rehearsal I would certainly make my way into the orchestra, snatch Herr Lahouse’s instrument from his hand and play myself!”

Reading that vivid and honest account does take me back to that first evening rehearsing in the dark and dingy Little Theater, in the basement beneath the Vert Auditorium, but those are not my words, they’re Mozart’s, describing rehearsals for the premiere.

In my naiveté, I probably hadn’t realized what a challenging piece the “Paris” is, but I quickly found out. I also realized that there were things that I had simply taken for granted with orchestras that I would have to learn how to teach and explain if I wanted to achieve a decent performance. The orchestra back then didn’t have nearly the talent pool it now does, and even many of the regular string principals back then weren’t available for that performance. It sounds funny to say this about a group that has since played four Mahler symphonies quite well, but the night before the concert I was far from sure we’d get through the concert without a disaster.

However, as they would time after time, the orchestra rose to the occasion on the day, and not only made it through, but gave a proper performance. Still, I’ll always remember those rehearsals as some of the most daunting I’ve ever been part of, and a time where I really had to start at the beginning of the beginning in order to even be able to get through the beginning of a piece.

By coming back to this symphony, I hope we can all find some measure of how far we’ve come. For me, I can see how much my understanding of Mozart has evolved. What an astounding piece this is- maybe it was the pressure of trying to win over a foreign audience, but Mozart pulls out all the stops in this piece in an incredible way. It is second only to the Jupiter for the sheer audacity of it’s contrapuntal writing in all his symphonies. Amazing stuff.

I’m doing one thing completely differently from past performances this week. I’ve seen the same famous letter from Mozart to his father quoted in almost every program note about the piece I’ve ever seen (the same letter I quoted from above). His description of the Finale is interesting-

“The andante [the second movement] also found favor, but particularly the last allegro [the final movement] because, having noticed that all last allegri here opened, like the first, with all instruments together and usually in unison, I began with two violins only, piano [softly] for eight bars only, then forte [loudly], so that at the piano (as I had expected) the audience said “Sh!” and when they heard the forte began at once to clap their hands.

Interesting because, I’ve never seen a performance with just two violins playing at the beginning. It’s always done with the two violin sections. I decided to throw caution to the wind and do it as Mozart described it with just solo players. Will the audience burst into applause on Saturday at that moment? Why not.

A view from the podium dingy basement, i'm outta here, mozart, oes

Margaret….

How can you not love Margaret, even when she makes you crazy?

A woman of so many talents, even she can’t keep track of them.

Mortal enemy of deadlines everywhere.

Creative and sophisticated graphic artist- she does most of our posters and brochures.

Accomplished and respected composer- we premiered a beautiful work of hers in 2005.

Jazz ensemble director and arranger.

Chair of music department, Blue Mountain Community College

Possibly most abrasive sounding speaking voice in the world.

Fiddler.

Accordion player.

Pianist.

Pendleton native- mom is a local piano teacher. Moved back from Cali to look after poorly grandmother and stayed. We’re glad.

Free spirit- even a law unto herself.

Once emailed me to say that next year, she would be “the good Margaret.”

Honest, all the time and true to herself.

Incapable of not talking.

Generous in every sense.

Doctor of Musical Arts in theory and composition

One of the ten funniest people I know.

Did I mention? mortal enemy of deadlines everywhere….

Second clarinet, Oregon East Symphony

A view from the podium oes