Oftentimes, in the hectic life of a Hopkins student, one does not fully take the time to venture away from Homewood to enjoy what the other local campuses have to offer.
The Peabody Institute frequently showcases their talented students in performances given every so often.
The performance by the Symphony Orchestra last Tuesday showcased the string, brass, wind and percussion students, and the two hour concert showed the dedication and endurance of all the students involved.
The concert covered a span of pieces from different genres, from classical to the 20th century. Although there were several small hiccups during the evening, all three pieces were overall well presented and well played.
The first piece of the evening was “Duo Ye No. 2,” composed by Chen Yi. Since it was written in the 20th-century style, the piece was extremely dissonant, almost to the point of sounding atonal.
Much of the piece was played in the high registers of the string instruments, making it sound a lot like two trains crashing into each other repeatedly.
There was a frantic feel to the entire piece, and it seemed like a piece would could be found in a soundtrack to an adventure movie during the climatic final battle.
It was played at an extremely fast tempo, and that combined with all the dissonant chords kept the audience listening and wanting to hear the resolution of the piece.
This was the piece which probably made the biggest impression of the evening; the next two pieces were rather bland in comparison.
The second piece, Mozart’s “Clarinet Concerto in A major, K.622,” was a classical piece with phrases that swelled and shrunk and a melody line that was extremely easy to follow.
Compared with the first piece, the second sounded much nicer but lacked excitement.
In the first movement (“Allegro”), the clarinet solo sometimes would overpower the underscore of instruments acting as the accompaniment, but by the time the piece got to the second movement, “Adagio,” it was much more in line with the rest of the instruments.
The third movement of the piece — “Rondo: Allegro” — was much more playful than the other two movements.
The tone was lighter and the tempo was faster and seemed like it could be played at a dance in a giant ballroom.
During all three movements, though, the clarinet soloist stopped in the middle of the piece and cleaned out his clarinet by blowing on it, which disrupted the flow of the performance.
Most performers save their best piece for last in order to make a lasting impression on their viewers. The Peabody Symphony Orchestra, though, seemed to do the exact opposite.
The last piece of the evening was Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 by Tchaikovsky was probably the most uninteresting piece of the evening.
It was a Romantic style piece, but it was rather unremarkable. It’s not to say that it was played badly, but there was nothing about the piece that drew the listeners in and kept them wanting to listen.
One of the only noticeable features of the piece was the “bursts” of music: there would be a stretch of quiet melody, and without warning, the music would be at full volume, as though the musicians were trying to awaken anyone who had fallen asleep during the concert.
The piece ended on a grand scale, with every instrument playing a perfect cadence over and over as loudly as they could, a typical ending for a piece written in Tchaikovsky’s time.
While well-performed, the piece left listeners feeling indifferent, and although the ending was grand, they could have picked a different piece to end on so as to leave a greater impression on the audience members.
The conductor was obviously passionate about the pieces he was directing; it wasn’t unusual to see him jumping up and down on his stand or twisting his body in response to the phrase of the music.
His passion came out in the way the melody flowed from all the instruments onstage.
Despite the flaws of the performance, it was still mostly solid overall.
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