SCOWCROFT LEADS SALT LAKE SYMPHONY
By Edward Reichel
Deseret News, UT
April 16 2006
When Barbara Scowcroft steps onto the podium next Saturday to conduct
the Salt Lake Symphony, she’ll be making history. She is the first
woman to lead the orchestra in its 30-year history.
Barbara Scowcroft “I don’t want to make an issue out of it, but I think
it’s an interesting fact,” Scowcroft said. “But I’m really thrilled
to be conducting the Salt Lake Symphony. They’re a wonderful group
of players.”
The centerpiece on Saturday’s program is Franz Schubert’s magnificent
Ninth Symphony, appropriately nicknamed, considering its length, the
“Great.” “It’s taxing and takes a lot of stamina, but it’s a fabulous
work,” Scowcroft said.
She added that there is so much to be uncovered in the Ninth.
“Schubert was influenced by Beethoven, and so you really have two
different styles in here – Beethoven’s drama and Schubert’s undulating
lyricism. The music is delicately textured, yet it contains an
enormous message.”
Also on Saturday’s concert will be the U.S. premiere of Dana Paul
Perna’s “. . . songe de voix perdues . . . ” (“. . . dream of the lost
voices . . .”) for flute and strings. Salt Lake Symphony principal
flute Laurel Ann Maurer will be the soloist.
“It’s a very beautiful piece,” Maurer said. “Dana’s music is
interesting, because it’s a mixture of modern techniques and
impressionism that blend with his Americanism. I love it.”
Perna wrote the piece in 2002 for Maurer, who premiered it in
Armenia. “I was scheduled to do a chamber orchestra concert in Armenia
in December of that year. So I called on some composers I’ve worked
with in the past to see if they had anything for flute and strings.”
When Maurer contacted Perna, he said he didn’t have anything but he
wanted to mull the idea over in his mind. “And what he came up with
was this beautiful piece of music.”
Laurel Ann Maurer The immediate genesis of the piece was the first
anniversary of 9/11. “That made a deep impact on Dana,” Maurer
said. “It reminded him of all the victims of Sept. 11 who died in
New York and Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. It made him think
of the victims’ children, who now can only hear the voices of their
parents in their dreams.”
Scowcroft, who is a member of the first violin section of the Utah
Symphony, has always been interested in conducting and has been
expanding her podium engagements in recent years. Besides guesting with
the Salt Lake Symphony this season, she is also the music director
of the Utah Youth Symphony and, since 2000, resident conductor of
the American Festival for the Arts in Houston, Texas.
She has also led the festival chamber orchestra in concerts at the
Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson, Wyo.
In addition to the Schubert and Perna pieces, Saturday’s concert
will also include the “Bacchanale” from Camille Saint-Saens’ opera
“Samson et Dalila.”