By Jim Lowe
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Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with its revelatory “Ode to Joy,” has been a beloved celebration of humanity since Leonard Bernstein conducted a worldwide telecast performance honoring the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Vermont has its own tradition of Beethoven’s Ninth. For the 10th year, the Green Mountain Mahler Festival has celebrated New Year’s Day with the work at the Elley-Long Music Center. For five years now, that performance has been preceded by one at Stowe’s Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center.
“We tried it and it’s taken off,” explains Daniel Weiss. “Beethoven’s Ninth is arguably one of the most recognizable and familiar classical works out there. In particular, the last movement, the ‘Ode to Joy,’ is such an affirmation of hope and promise.
“It’s a fantastic piece to play,” Weiss, an avocational bass player and founder of the festival, said by phone. “When you play the last movement, the ‘Ode to Joy,’ and the associated parts come in, you just feel good. You feel like you’re part of something.
“The audience response has always been enthusiastically positive,” he said. “In particular, when we branched out and started doing the performances at Spruce Peak up in Stowe, it was a little bit of an unknown to them initially, but now it’s become a tradition for them as well. It’s been a full house.”
The Green Mountain Mahler Festival presents its 10th annual performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, at 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 28, at the Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center in Stowe, and at 3 p.m. New Year’s Day at the Elley-Long Music Center in Colchester. Proceeds from the Jan. 1 concert benefit Age Well, parent organization of Meals-on-Wheels and other local community services.
Daniel Bruce conducts the Green Mountain Mahler Festival Orchestra and Chorus. (The chorus master is Erik Kroncke.) Vocal soloists are soprano Lillian Broderick, mezzo-soprano Linda Radtke, tenor Wayne Hobbs and bass Kroncke.
Bruce, music director of the Burlington Civic Symphony Orchestra and an East Montpelier resident, has conducted all of the performances over the 10 years. The orchestra — a 75-member community orchestra — has been evolving, as most of the volunteer players are returning, and many have played since the first time.
“I’m demanding more from the players — but they’re also able to do more because of their familiarity of the music,” Bruce said by phone. “Most of them show up with most of the notes under their fingers — and some of them joke with me they get a few more notes every year.”
Bruce is finding that with experience the players are a lot more responsive to his conducting.
“There’s a certain amount of performers being buried in the music when they’re playing something difficult,” he said. “Even professional performers, if they’re unfamiliar with the music, will follow the conductor less and be worried more about what’s on the page. Now people know what to expect — and I’m finding that they’re following more what I do much more easily.”
Kroncke, an international opera bass who lives in Montpelier, has been rehearsing the 50 members in advance of their joining the orchestra.
“He’s a wonderful musician and he understands the music fully,” Bruce said. “He is really good at bringing the best out of community singers, so he always brings a chorus that is well-prepared and ready to work. With him it’s pretty easy to put the chorus together with the orchestra.”
Bruce is no longer as concerned with the technical aspects.
“What I look for now is nuance,” he said. “I look for the moments in the music that are overlooked and I try to bring those out. The dramatic opening of the grand finale will always be there, but I find I’m looking to get the most out of every transition; I’m looking to bring the most out of every phrase; out of every tone color.”
Bruce remembers well the first rehearsal 10 years ago.
“We got to the midpoint of a three-hour rehearsal and took a break, and we had not made it halfway through the fourth movement yet — we had started with the fourth movement,” he said. “I was starting to wonder if I had taken on more than I could handle.”
The Green Mountain Mahler Festival was founded in 2002 by Weiss, whose “day job” is professor of medicine (pulmonary disease and critical care) at the University of Vermont, in the mold of a similar organization he founded in Seattle in 1995, the Northwest Mahler Festival.
The goal of the volunteer orchestra is to provide the opportunity for local musicians and audiences to experience the large-scale Romantic works by Mahler, Richard Strauss, etc. that are not normally accessible to smaller local community orchestras.
“As a non-professional horn player, I loved listening to Mahler, but to actually play it — just for the joy of it — was amazing,” explained Helen Read, a participant since 2005. “I like to explain it as kind of like All-State for grownups, except that there is no formal audition process. We recruit musicians from other local groups throughout the state, and folks new to the area tend to find us.”
Initially the festival only produced readings, where the musicians would spend a day working on a major masterpiece with a guest conductor. Eventually public concerts were added, and the second ever, in January 2010 — Brahms “A German Requiem” conducted by Nathaniel Lew — was a benefit for Haiti earthquake relief.
Most of the concerts since then, including all but one of the New Year’s Day concerts, have been benefits. While the Stowe performance is not a benefit due to the contract with Spruce Peak Performing Arts, it covers expenses and allows the festival to give essentially all proceeds from the Elley-Long performance to charity. From 2010 to date, the Green Mountain Mahler has raised more than $55,000 for charity, of which nearly $40,000 has come from the annual Beethoven’s Ninth concerts.
The Beethoven’s Ninth concerts are also rewarding to the musicians — and audiences — who just keep coming back.
“It’s like you’re peeling layers back on an onion but the onion never gets smaller,” Bruce said. “It’s a microcosm of why Beethoven was such a great composer. The music itself is just tremendously powerful.”
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