The IU Chamber Orchestra took to the Musical Arts Center’s stage Wednesday night to perform five pieces of classical symphony. They were joined by Jeffrey Kahane, a conductor and educator at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.
The concert featured a grand piano duet performance of Mozart’s “Concerto in E-Flat Major for Two Pianos and Orchestra, K. 365” by Jacobs School of Music master’s degree students studying piano performance Jihyeon Yoon and Nathan Parque.
The two students won the Mozart Double Piano Concerto Competition two weeks ago, where all duos competing performed Mozart’s “K. 365.” After winning the concerto competition, Yoon and Parque’s award was to play the piece with the Chamber Orchestra.
Kahane specializes in teaching pianists and chamber music. He began sitting in on the orchestra’s rehearsals about a week ago, along with rehearsals with just the two pianists. Before these sit-ins, Yoon’s teacher spoke highly of Kahane, creating a lasting impression before the duo even met the educator.
“No other conductor helps the pianists like that, because they usually like to take the reins and everything. I mean, he was very gracious,” Parque said.
As the hum of the orchestra tuning their instruments quieted, Kahane took to the stage and began to flick his wrists to conduct the first piece in the program, Jean-Philippe Rameau's “Entrée de Polymnie” from “Les Boréades” (1763).
As the orchestra’s instruments began to still and the wind instrumentalists took a breath of air, the Chamber Orchestra began George Frideric Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351.”
The next piece was another Rameau composition from “Dardanus” (1739) with two movements titled “Premier tambourin” and “Deuxième tambourin.”
Then, furniture began gliding across the stage as students moved two grand pianos to the forefront, piecing them together so that the keys faced opposite ends of the stage. Yoon and Parque took to the pianos, ready to perform the three movements of Mozart’s piece titled “Allegro,” “Andante” and “Rondeaux: Allegro.”
Yoon said she loves the third movement, “Rondeaux: Allegro.”
“It’s such a lively dance and it’s so catchy,” Yoon said. “I think every time we rehearse it for the next few hours; it’d be stuck in our head.”
After the pianists finished their duet, the dim lights of the Musical Arts Center lit up for a brief intermission, allowing the stage to reset back to the classic symphony setup it was before the double piano piece.
As members of the Chamber Orchestra filed back into their designated seats, Kahane followed the orchestra back onto the stage to conduct one last piece by Robert Schumann titled “Symphony No. 1 in B-Flat Major, Op. 38” (1841).
Emma Curtright, a sophomore music education major, said this semester was her first time in the Chamber Orchestra after previously being a part of IU’s Wind Ensemble and the Marching Hundred. Curtright played the trumpet throughout the concert but switched to piccolo for “Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351.”
Curtright said she enjoys playing with a symphony and loves the music she gets to play, creating a fun environment around her.
“It’s fun just running the music and going through and hearing all the things,” Curtright said. “By the time we played the piece so many times that by the end, I’m not even counting my rests; I’m dancing and singing up there, you know.”
The next performance by the Chamber Orchestra will be at 2 p.m. April 4 in Auer Hall, featuring professor of music Arthur Fagen as the conductor and third-year undergraduate studying horn performance David Holloway as a soloist.
