Ukiah Symphony Orchestra to present ‘Cycle/Recycle’ concert

There are 19 musicians’ chairs carefully arranged four feet apart on the Mendocino College Center Theatre stage, with an orchestra shell behind them and empty rows of auditorium seats before them. The Ukiah Symphony Orchestra is returning to the stage together for their first concert of the 2021-22 season and for the first time in over a year.

The performance, “Cycle/Recycle,” will feature ambitious orchestral works by composers like Gustav Mahler that have been rearranged for a smaller setting, a guest mezzo soprano and will spotlight musicians from the local community.

While the musicians will perform live at the Center Theatre, the audience will again be entirely virtual.

“The symphony is changing in a lot of positive ways. We have more people than normal who are actually at the college and I hope that continues to grow,” says Music Director Phillip Lenberg.

The symphony incorporates an audition-based class offered at the college, in addition to including talent from the community. However, despite having new faces behind the instruments, the orchestra is currently limited to having 20 musicians on stage at a time.

While the pandemic-influenced setting makes for a more intimate group, only having the bare bones of an orchestra also has its fair share of challenges. One unusual layer of difficulty that orchestra members have had to navigate is the physical space between each musician.

As listening for musical cues from instruments across the room can be straining for the distanced musicians, Lenberg’s role as conductor has become even more essential.

“I’ve noticed that I really have to over-telegraph what I’m doing, because half of your face is missing,” Lenberg says, referring to what it’s like to wear a mask while conducting.

His conducting relies on gesturing and eye contact, but Lenberg says the trust that gradually builds between himself and the musicians is also what makes the music begin to flow naturally.

The daunting scores that Lenberg has selected for the performance also reflect his trust in the orchestra’s abilities.

“It’s very difficult for a community orchestra to perform Mahler,” Lenberg says. This is partly due to Mahler’s complex scores, with every measure containing some sort of indication for the musician. Typically, only large orchestras can feasibly play Mahler’s song cycles—which are groups of compositions that are meant to be played together.

Lenberg adds, “Not only technically, but it takes a lot of focus and a lot of detail for performers.”

The arrangement of Mahler’s song cycle that the symphony is using accounts for the “recycle” aspect of the performance, as other famous composers were responsible for transforming the music to suit a smaller group of musicians.

During the turn of the century in Vienna, Austria, it was common for musicians to hold weekly salon gatherings where they would rearrange large orchestral works for quartets and other small ensembles—which is how they transformed Mahler’s work. To fill in the musical gaps left by omitted instruments, a piano or harmonium were often used to create a full sound.

Ben Rueb, a trained classical pianist, is going to play in the upcoming concert for his first live performance with the symphony. Additionally, Janice Timm is returning to play harmonium.

The song cycle of Mahler’s that the orchestra will be playing, “Songs of a Wayfarer,” is thought to be a set of songs that he wrote in the aftermath of a failed relationship with a soprano.

His musical composition is set to the text of four poems that he wrote himself, which is also a unique element of the cycle as most composers write music to poetry that others have written.

“It’s clear the grief he felt, it’s very palpable in his songs,” guest soprano Melinda Martinez Becker notes. “They’re beautifully illustrative, and you can hear that it’s just this beautiful reminder that art can imitate life.”

The title of the first movement roughly translates to “When My Sweetheart is Married” and describes the devastation Mahler feels over losing his loved one to someone else. The second movement, “I Went This Morning Over to the Field,” contains the happiest music of the cycle until the ending, when he is reminded that despite how beautiful the world is, his happiness will no longer bloom.

“The third movement is major despair; I call it the ‘metallica movement,’” Becker says. “It’s intense and it’s driving and it’s fitting for this agonizing nature of his obsession with losing this person.”

The title: “I Have a Gleaming Knife.” The music in the third movement compares the agony of losing love and the pain of having a knife pierce one’s heart.

The final movement, “The Two Blue Eyes of My Beloved,” is a gentle revolution. Mahler describes how the image of her eyes has caused him so much grief that he can no longer stand to be awake.

Lenberg notes that Mahler uses a rhythm related to European funeral processions in the final movement, in a “very literal reference to this love dying.”

Becker will be accompanying the orchestra through Mahler’s song cycle. Her performance with the symphony will be her first time back on stage—in a room with more than one person—since the pandemic hit.

“It’s such a treat to be getting back to performing with other people and feel that energy in the room and feel the vibration of all the instruments around you, it’s really powerful,” Becker says.

In her career as a mezzo soprano, Becker has mainly performed chamber music. Often that includes singing with guitar duos, string quartets and piano trios. “And every once in a while, you get lucky enough to perform with an orchestra,” she says.

Becker was originally scheduled to be part of the symphony’s concert in May 2020, but with pandemic restrictions preventing live performances for over a year, her feature in the symphony was postponed twice.

“Finally, we are here,” Becker says. “I have to extend my gratitude for this opportunity, and it’s so special to be performing this song cycle for my first performance back on stage.”

In addition to Mahler, other composers being featured in the upcoming symphony performance include Nancy Bloomer Deussen, Hanna Benn and Claude Debussy. Lenberg is continuing to strive toward including underrepresented composers in every concert this season—primarily meaning women and people of color.

In contrast to the intensity of Mahler, the remaining three works by the other composers are colorful and dreamlike, according to Lenberg. Debussy’s piece, “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” was written during the French impressionist era at the turn of the century and shares certain qualities of impressionist art—the harmonies bleed together, the music is constantly transforming and requires the musicians to emphasize a specific sound style as they play.

Deussen’s “Peninsula Suite” and Benn’s “Where Springs Not Fail” compositions are written for strings only, so the concert will be an instrumental mixture from start to finish.

“Coming back and seeing everybody in person has been heartening and extraordinarily inspiring,” Lenberg concludes. “Not only just to reconnect with the orchestra as human beings, but to grow with them over the past two months over this incredible music that we have the privilege to be performing is really inspiring.”

“Cycle/Recycle” has been professionally recorded and will be livestreamed at 8 p.m. on Oct. 22. The performance can be accessed through ukiahsymphony.org, where tickets for the single concert or season subscriptions can be purchased.