The Vermont Philharmonic will open its 64th season next weekend, its first full season since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic more than two years ago.
“We’re starting with a little bit of a different program,” explains Lou Kosma, the orchestra’s longtime music director. “It’s really an all-American program — but that includes Mexico.
“It’s a very popular concert of music of the 20th century,” he said. “The audience won’t know it, but they will like it.
The state’s oldest community orchestra, conducted Kosma, will present “American Roots: Music by New World Composers,” featuring works by Arturo Marquez, Florence Price, Deems Taylor and Howard Hanson: at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, at the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro; and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16, at the Barre Opera House.
The program opens with Mexican composer Márquez’s lively Danzón No. 2, his interpretation of an elegant Cuban dance, with its nostalgic melodies, sexy rhythms and great expressive freedom.
“That piece has been made famous by the Bolivar Orchestra and Gustavo Dudamel,” Kosma said. “It’s a Cuban dance style, with a lot of syncopation. I think it’s a piece that will get people dancing in the aisles — it could.
“This was used in the series ‘Mozart in the Jungle,’” Kosma said. “It’s a great piece — and the first time I heard it, I said we have to do it.”
In a completely different mode, Price’s 1951 “Adoration” is reflective. Price was African-American, a graduate of the New England Conservatory in 1906, under-appreciated during her lifetime and for nearly 70 years after her death. It was only in 2009 that many of her more than 300 compositions were found in her abandoned summer home and are starting to get the attention they deserve.
“At a time when it was hard enough for an African American man to get something performed by a symphony, she had her First Symphony performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933,” Kosma said. “And her First and Third Symphonies won a Grammy with the Philadelphia Orchestra in April. She said, ‘I have two handicaps, those of sex and race. I’m a woman, and I have some Negro blood in my veins.’”
Taylor was known during his lifetime as the presenter of the New York Philharmonic’s radio broadcasts, the narrator for Walt Disney’s original 1940 “Fantasia” — and even a panelist on game shows.
“He was not a big champion of the 12-tone stuff,” Kosma said. His “Three Century” Suite comprises five movements.
“There’s a pavane, which he spells pavan, a saraband, a gigue, a rigadoon and something called ‘Bartholomew Faire’,” Kosma said. “It’s tuneful and lovely, it’s intricate and well-crafted. And we’re maybe the second or third performance ever.”
Kosma discovered the “Three Century” Suite through a colleague in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra who was a friend of Michael Cook, Taylor’s grandson. Cook plans to attend the concerts.
Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 in D-flat Major, Op. 30 was written on commission from Serge Koussevitzky for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930. Hanson wrote that he “aimed in this symphony to create a work that was young in spirit, lyrical and romantic in temperament, and simple and direct in expression.”
“It sounds like really, really expressive film music,” Kosma said. “There’s a very lyrical haunting second theme, which is known as the ‘Interlochen theme,’ and it’s always performed at the Interlochen School of the Arts. It is a very grandiose theme. Although it is very American, you can hear the kind of bigness of Bruckner with the theme always coming back.”
The Philharmonic remained publicly silent throughout nearly all of the pandemic, but throughout, the players were working toward their return to the concert stage.
“During the pandemic, we had Zoom sessions,” Kosma said. “It wasn’t so much playing as keeping people involved, and involved with each other, because they all opined about not being able to play together. There were some folks who invested in electrical devices so they could actually play string quartets from different locations and be relatively together.”
They didn’t play together until last year, when Kosma conducted a series of reading rehearsals. first only winds, brass and percussion.
“They were all on the stage, separated at the Barre Opera House,” Kosma said. “I did wind pieces, some of which will show up in our programs to come, like the Strauss Serenade, Op. 7. In our spring concert, we did the Vaughan Williams English Folk Song Suite with expanded symphonic wind ensemble.”
For the strings, the players were all masked and separated, with separate music stands.
“We did the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and the Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” Kosma said. “Of course, people were leery. Not everybody wanted to participate, but we had a large enough orchestra to spread out over the stage of the Barre Opera House. We knew that it had a good air filtration system since it was recently renovated.”
“I know professionals, and no one takes two years off and has it come back right away,” he said. “It’s not just our musicians.”
In its first time back on stage, this year’s spring concerts, April 30 and May 1 at the Highland Center and the Barre Opera House, the orchestra fared well — as did the summer pops concerts.
“We did two really, really successful concerts,” Kosma said. “I don’t know what our final count was in Duxbury, but it was one of our biggest audiences ever at Moose Meadow Lodge on the second Sunday in August. And on Sept. 3, we had close to 500 people at Shore Acres in North Hero.
“We had to work at it,” he said. “Originally, I was going to delve into new pops material, but I decided what we needed to do was combine some new material with some material that we knew well, because I wanted the concerts to come off well. And they did.”
