The Cayuga Chamber Orchestra shines a light on the music of Northern Europe in its upcoming concert, Northern Lights, on Saturday, October 11, at 7:30 p.m. in Ford Hall on the Ithaca College campus. The program spans Norway, Estonia, and Finland — with both familiar names and a major contemporary voice.
Music Director Guillaume Pirard says the theme came naturally. “All the pieces are from either Northern Europe or trace back to it,” he explains. “We start with a Norwegian composer, Edvard Grieg, and two Elegiac Melodies. Then we go to the Estonian-American composer Lembit Beecher’s cello concerto Tell Me Again, and Arvo Pärt’s First Symphony. We finish with Valse triste by Jean Sibelius of Finland.”
Pirard is especially eager to share Beecher’s new concerto, written for and performed by cellist Karen Ouzounian, a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and Beecher’s partner. “His music really digs into memory and storytelling,” Pirard says. “You have an immediate emotional reaction, but like all great music, you keep listening and discovering new things. I think this piece is a real masterpiece.”
Ouzounian and Beecher frequently collaborate on projects that blend music, animation, and song, though Pirard notes that Tell Me Again will be performed in a purely musical setting. “The claymation he does takes an incredible amount of time — just 30 seconds of animation is a huge labor,” Pirard laughs. “For a 30-minute concerto, that would be titanic!”
The concert opens with Grieg’s Two Elegiac Melodies, originally songs for voice and piano that the composer later arranged for string orchestra. Pirard says that background changes how the ensemble approaches the score. “We’ll be thinking about the words that inspired the music,” he explains. “The challenge is to create, with twelve string players, the expressiveness of a single human voice.”
Listeners may also be surprised by Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No. 1, written long before the Estonian composer’s meditative style made him world-famous. “It’s a 12-tone piece — strict, avant-garde, and incredibly powerful,” Pirard says. “When I first heard it as a teenager, I was blown away. It shows how capable Pärt was in that modernist language before he turned to what we now call spiritual minimalism.”
The evening concludes with Sibelius’s Valse triste, one of the composer’s most hauntingly beautiful works. “It comes from incidental music Sibelius wrote for a play,” Pirard explains. “A dying woman imagines herself rising and dancing with ghosts. The music waltzes and quickens until death comes knocking. It’s a gorgeous, unforgettable piece.”
The Cayuga Chamber Orchestra presents Northern Lights on Saturday, October 11, at 7:30 p.m. in Ford Hall on the Ithaca College campus. A pre-concert chat begins at 6:30 p.m. For tickets and more information, visit ccoithaca.org