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Dr. James Ross in love with SOSL

by Tennyson Rodrigo

It was two years ago that Dr. James Ross first conducted the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka (SOSL). He took the baton for the second time as Guest Conductor at the Ladies' College Auditorium in February 2003. Looking even more youthful and relaxed this time he seemed better adjusted to February's high humidity and temperature!

The evening's curtain-raiser was Mikhail Glinka's exhilarating Overture from Ruslan and Lyudmila - the second of the only two operas written by Glinka. It's dapper tempo makes heavy demands particularly on the strings. The orchestra met the challenge effectively and the lyrical secondary theme came off pleasingly.

The intermittent, delightful dialogues between the woodwinds and the perky Timpani enhanced the drama and buoyancy of the piece. The racy overture was all done in about 5 1/2 minutes within the coda ending in what sounded like an acrobatic twist!

The much loved second movement from Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No: 1 in D, Opus 11 - the Andante Cantabile - was executed affectionately with its intimate melody from the muted strings layered underneath by contrapuntal harmonic textures.

The main work in the first half of the program comprised four pieces from the first suite of Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt. These pieces embody expressions of poignancy, pictorial colouring and drama. All in all the orchestra lacked coherence and the desired quality of tonality to give such expression. The woodwinds (particularly the oboes) were hesitant and tended to droop and collapse. The Morning Mood started with an air of freshness but failed to hold the momentum and buoyancy.

It's in the scheme of things that the conductor faces his back to the audience which therefore fails to see the conductor's facial expressions. It can be disconcerting if a couple of players (in the string section in this instance) exchange furtive smiles (as if they are privy to a joke shared with the conductor) while the rest of the orchestra and the conductor are focused on what they have to do. When this did happen while playing Peer Gynt, my own internal reaction was that it wasn't in good taste and not fair by the conductor. All members of the orchestra should at all times during a performance act professionally and control their extraneous impulses.

The post-interval program was devoted entirely to Beethoven's Seventh Symphony which was completed in 1812, premiered in December 1813 (190 years ago) and published in 1816.

At a pre-concert talk Dr. Ross posed a question and provided the answer. In essence his question and answer were: How did Beethoven's music sound during his time when a small orchestra played it on period instruments? There is no way of knowing this since there were no recordings of any kind made at the time.

Dr. Ross was trying to make the point that great compositions are not antiquities of history tucked away in archives. They are not bound by national boundaries, geography or time. Beethoven's music is eternally alive and can be re-created and interpreted anywhere at any time - even in Sri Lanka today.

Well, one cannot agree more. And there is no better way of endorsing this than by citing what the famous English music critic and essayist, Sir Neville Cardus, wrote on hearing Toscanini's performance of the seventh symphony in May 1939: "Even at points where experience tells to differ from Toscanini ... it was that inexorable rhythmic power matched with Toscanini's lucid formal sense, that made him a matchless interpreter of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony".

Clearly, this is a work of epic proportions demanding an enormous range of dynamics; a preponderance of intricately woven rhythmic figures, large and small, manifests in the crevices of every movement. Though rhythmic figures dominate, the pastoral-sounding lyricism of the melodic sections is of exquisite beauty.

The first movement's tutti sections started off with tremendous energy and full-bodied sound. The Ladies' College Auditorium that is not altogether famous for excellent acoustic war for a brief moment lit up. That moment for me was the high point of the evening's performance, very brief though it was. The contrastingly soft woodwinds also played their part in-between the tuttis. Understandably, this could not be sustained. The work was too complex to proceed from hereon to accumulate the momentum toward the Vivace.

The Allegretto in the minor mode with a plain, subdued tune having an oriental evocation was played with lot more ease and feeling. But overall, having regard to the immense complexity of this symphony, the SOSL players' effort was commendable though perhaps not good enough. The outside thunder and lightning that penetrated the auditorium at times, drowning even the majestic sound of Timpani, did not help.

Getting back to the pre-concert talk, an animated Dr. Ross paid a compliment to the talent and quality of some of the Sri Lankan musicians he had met and heard performing. It was clear that he was optimistic about SOSL's tremendous potential. That was a very encouraging and heartening remark. If Sri Lanka's classical-music performances are to reach much better standards we need a lot more exposure to foreign guest-artists and conductors like Dr. Ross. That's not all. We also need hard work, discipline and dedication to lift the standard of our music making to truly international standards. All music lovers will hope fervently that Dr. Ross will return to Sri Lanka and no doubt the SOSL players will adore playing under his baton over and over again.

As for Dr. Ross, one couldn't help feeling he was in love with the SOSL!

(The writer is a member of the Western Music Panel of the Sri Lanka Arts Council).

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