Sarasota Orchestra emerges from long pandemic break with ‘Rebirth’ concert

No matter what the results, conductor Kensho Watanabe knows there will be a little something extra in the air during the Discover Mozart “Rebirth” concert he will lead next weekend for the Sarasota Orchestra in the Sarasota Opera House.

Saturday marks the first time the full orchestra, or at least a majority of the musicians, have been able to play together in more than 18 months. The symphony’s 2019-20 season and its search for a new music director were interrupted by the pandemic. Small ensembles of strings and percussion were able to keep playing chamber programs indoors, while woodwinds and brass players appeared outdoors in area parks for safety.

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“I’m excited to be joining something that seems close to what we want performances to look like,” Watanabe said in a recent interview from his new home base in Paris. The resurgence of concerts and other performances is possible only because of safety protocols, he said.

“There are still a lot of precautions being taken for safety for musicians and people coming into the hall. It’s not back to normal, but it’s back to renewal, it’s going back to Schumann,” he said.

The orchestra is part of the #SafeArtsSarasota initiative, launched by nine performing arts organizations that established a standard set of safety protocols that will be followed at each venue. Each of the organizations (along with some other groups that are signing on to the effort) will require negative COVID-19 tests, or allow patrons to show proof of vaccines. They all will require face masks to be worn at all times inside. Details of the orchestra’s safety procedures can be seen at sarasotaorchestra.org/safety.

Spirit of the music

The concert, which marks Watanabe’s debut in Sarasota, will feature Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 “Spring,” along with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466, and “Seven O’Clock Shout” by Valerie Coleman, whose work will also be heard later in the season.

Watanabe said the concert title of “Rebirth” perfectly fits the program.

Since the early days of his guest conducting career, he has led a lot of Schumann music.

“I took an affinity to it and I feel I do it well,” he said. The composer faced what today would be considered bipolar disorder, and the highs and lows of his moods can be heard in his compositions.

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“The Spring symphony is probably the most optimistic of the four symphonies that he wrote,” Watanabe said. “There is this kind of optimism that spring brings, apropos of what we’re going through now. It’s been a very very long winter for the performing arts.”

He said the idea of rebirth and renewal “also feeds into the idea we’re overdue for being more curious about composers outside the canon.” He refers to Coleman, a modern composer whose “Seven O’Clock Shout” was written during the pandemic as a commission for the Philadelphia Orchestra. It’s a tribute to nightly gatherings held in many cities where people would “open their windows or gather outside and bang pots and pans in tribute to medical professionals. There’s a section in the piece where the orchestra will hoot and holler and clap” themselves, he said.

Coleman’s “Umoja” is scheduled to be performed in a Feb. 17 chamber soiree.

For the Mozart piece, Watanabe will be joined by pianist Dominic Cheli, a young musician and winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition who was originally scheduled to make his Sarasota debut last fall playing Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 before that concert was canceled for the pandemic.

Watanabe said the Mozart concerto has a solemn quality. “It’s in D minor, an important key for him, like his Requiem and ‘Don Giovani.’ There is this kind of gloom to it, but still colored by this wonderful melodious writing that Mozart is known for.”

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Celebrating the arts:Proposed arts festival could bring national attention to Sarasota area cultural sceneHe said it will be his first performance with Cheli “and I’m excited about that. Collaboration and shared experience is not something we have been able to have in our lives. As I start back to what we’re meant to be doing, sharing performances, this is something I’m looking forward to.”

Watanabe, who served as assistant conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 2016-19, said his recent move to Paris, where his wife is attending graduate school, may be a good home base as he pursues other guest conducting jobs throughout Europe and around the world.

From medicine to conducting

Now 34, Watanabe said he came late to conducting. He was a biology major at Yale University, and planned to go to medical school, but was then inspired to go into conducting.

As a frequent guest conductor, he sees his role, in part, as “being the source of positivity and encouragement in the room. If I’m working with anyone, it doesn’t have to be music, it could be in the gym working out with other people, l can be the most positive and encouraging person in the room. Then there’s a rapport, trust, a two-way line of communication.”

He started playing the violin at the age of 2 in a Suzuki program in Japan, where he was born. “I always loved playing and loved playing with other people. Chamber music was important and I thought if you had a musical career, I would want to be a second violinist, that’s where I wanted to be. I always wanted to be in the middle of it. But I also see my role in that way as a conductor, sometimes leading, sometimes responding. It’s not always going in one direction.

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The Sarasota concert was not supposed to be his first concert during the pandemic. He had been booked for an opera project in Japan at the end of the Olympic games, and arrived in the country for the mandatory two-week quarantine.

“On day 12 they canceled my performances because of the rising numbers of cases,” he said. “It’s a frustrating thing but I completely understand why. Most of the people coming in to play were probably unvaccinated.”

He said it was a good reality check and “taught me to be patient. I understood why it needed to happen and I can prepare myself for the possibility that certain performances may be canceled or adjusted. I guess I’m saying this to almost tell myself that COVID’s not over. We’re still going through it, but I’m excited that we’re getting back to work in a way that ensures we are all safe.”

Discovery Mozart ‘Rebirth’

Sarasota Orchestra. Kensho Watanabe, guest conductor; Dominic Cheli, pianist. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sarasota Opera House, 61 N. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota. 941-953-3434; sarasotaorchestra.org

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