Segal to conduct at Auer Hall

Tonight at Auer Hall, the celebrated conductor Uriel Segal will conduct two pieces from Ludwig van Beethoven and Igor Stravinsky, arguably the 19th and 20th centuries’ most influential composers.

The program will include Beethoven’s famous “Eroica” Symphony in E Flat Major, as well as Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, featuring recent graduate of Oberlin College and winner of the 2013 IU Violin Concerto Competition Eliot Heaton  as soloist.

The performance will take place in Auer Hall at 8 p.m.

Heaton, who comes from Geneva, N.Y., has been active in violin studies since he was three and has recently maintained a rigorous performance schedule. He has performed as soloist for several world premiers as well as for the Oberlin Sinfonietta and has served as concertmaster or assistant concertmaster for the Oberlin Symphony and Chamber orchestras, the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic and the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra.

Stravinsky is best known for his demonstrative and forward-thinking ballets, one of which, “The Rite of Spring,” caused a riot when it premiered in 1913. “The Rite of Spring” is a ballet that featured alarming musical dissonance and unconventional rhythmic patterns.

However, he also composed pieces of a more traditional genre.

 Though it premiered eighteen years after “The Rite of Spring,” the Violin Concerto in D is considered “neoclassic,” or resembling the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in which Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Mozart composed.

“It is very transparent, light and built according to classical form,” Segal said. “Neoclassical is very much a term used when 20th century composers were trying to imitate the classical symphony.”

Stravinsky said he believed the “texture” of his piece resembled the intimate chamber music quartets of Mozart and Haydn rather than the more spacious orchestras that featured 30 or more musicians.

Segal said he believes the tradition of the piece comes from the 17th-century Baroque period.

“The spirit of neoclassical music is derived from Baroque,” he said. “Even the style of the third movement is more like Baroque music.”

Segal said the piece is rooted in the exaggerated and vigorous Baroque style, yet he maintains the Concerto’s Classic “lightness.” He referred to it as musical “pointillism,” borrowing the term from a style of late 19th French impressionist painters.

“Stravinsky is using a really big orchestra — a very big formation of wind especially — but he is using it very sparingly,” he said. “This type of writing gives you a lot of feeling of lightness.”  

Segal’s themes of lightness and transparency are apparent not just in the Violin Concerto, but in Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony as well. Recently, Segal has taken the nontraditional stance of performing Beethoven’s symphonies with smaller chamber orchestras, rather than large orchestras.

His downsizing also follows the trend of what he called “the new Baroque awakening,” performing pieces in the style of how they would have sounded when they were composed.

“You get the transparency and the balances which are very right for this music,” he said. “If you play it with a big, modern orchestra, you have to do many adjustments in order to have those pieces sound correctly.”

One of Beethoven’s most acclaimed symphonies, the “Eroica” is also one of Segal’s favorite pieces.

“It’s unique,” he said. “It has so much strength, and it’s so personal. It’s one of my most beloved pieces.”