This week’s contributor to the Spine Tingler Series is the young American conductor Edwin Outwater. Edwin is currently the music director of the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony. One year in, a lot of good things have been happening and it seems that community support is stronger than ever. Considering the highly publicized, almost terminally divisive rough patch that preceded his appointment, this is no small feat. More on this in a future post. Right now, it’s over to Edwin:

“I was in high school in Los Angeles, driving around in an old beat-up Volvo with my friends, catching to as many concerts as possible. On one sunny SoCal day, I heard the Emerson String Quartet playing Beethoven’s quartet Op. 132 at a large church right in the middle of Beverly Hills. I had no idea what I was about to hear.

Inside, the church was dark and cool, the altar bare. When the quartet began the slow “Heiliger Dankgesang” movement, they played without vibrato. You could almost see the sound moving through the air. The church embraced the sound as it would beautiful chant.

It was a perfect moment, and for me, opened the door to Beethoven’s late style. Looking back, I think I was taken in by the contrasts: big church, small quartet; intimacy and privacy; prayer and exultation; the personal and the universal. I felt shattered and reborn right then and there. This music showed me a larger world than the one I knew.

The Emersons ended their concert with Op. 130 and the Große Fuge. The light seemed blinding as I walked out of the church in to the SoCal sun. Beethoven had helped me find something I was looking for, something that I couldn’t describe. After that, I knew music was my life.

It’s that time again. This week’s Spine Tinglers installment comes courtesy of conductor Thomas Dausgaard. He’s the man in charge of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra as well a principal conductor of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. His disc of short works by Nielsen was nominated for a 2007 Grammy. Enough blathering from Miss Mussel. Here’s Mr Dausgaard:

“Some years ago the wonderful violist Steven Dann introduced me to a recording on which he played the 2nd violin in Mahler symphony no 4 - well, 2nd violin solo, as this was a recording of the chamber version of the symphony by Erwin Stein done in 1921. It was made for the circle of musicians in and around the 2nd Viennese school of composers in Vienna, and it was scored for just string quintet, flute, oboe, clarinet, piano, harmonium, percussion, and soprano.

Although I consider myself a curious and open-minded musician/human being I had rather low hopes for this: a symphony with a very prominent solo-horn, now without horn ! - and how would the intensity of the slow movement be able to build up in such a thin-layered setting?

As so often, low - or no - expectations can be the most rewarding: intensity was exactly what this scoring and performance had! With every musician shaping his/her line individually, with beautifully varied use of vibrato and portamenti, a kind of intensity arose which was truly chamber musical; a musical dialogue between them evolved in a way presenting the essence of Mahler, where every line has a story to tell, a particular role in the overall expression.

No more so than in the slow movement, where the sonority of a full symphony orchestra was replaced by the very personal expression of each musician in turn taking the lead, adding their characterful individuality to the gradual and tremendous build-up of tension. It blew my ears and my mind off: powerful (in a particular way which doesn’t necessarily happen in an orchestral performance), thought-provoking (is this really possible?!) - and spine-tingling!

For everyone of these masterpieces it is good to be reminded that there are several ways of approaching them, and through our own curiosity we might be able to discover new and spine-tingling insights and truths every time we perform them.

(photo credit Marianne Grondhal)

Some time ago, Miss Mussel dreamed up a newsletter feature called Spine Tinglers, a sort of vignette space about those special moments in music that make all the hours of practicing and playing crap gigs for no money worthwhile. In order to fill that space, she wrote to some musicians and miracles of miracles, they answered.

It seems a shame to let their generously supplied responses waste away in the OM Inbox in hopes that someday Miss Mussel will get around to publishing this newsletter/albatross, so here is the first installment. Many thanks to Dame Evelyn Glennie for taking part.

I remember attending a performance by the London Symphony Orchestra of “The Rite of Spring” by Stravinsky at the Barbican in London back in the mid 80’s when I was a student. Coming from a remote part of North East Scotland with no experience of attending concerts by professional orchestras, this was an incredible experience that has remained with me ever since.

The intensity of the music and how it was performed totally transfixed my whole being to that moment. The extremes of dynamics, sound colour, the fragility and strength of the music, the daring message through sound and the fact that this piece pushed the boundaries of the players when it was first written (and a long time thereafter) are just a few of the reasons why this music has remained one of my all time favourites.