By Kate Lochte
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-885849.mp3
Murray, KY – In its Nature's Glory Concert Saturday, February 20th, The Paducah Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by the third of four candidates for its Artistic Director, Raffaele Ponti.
Chef d'orchestra is what I'm called in France. It's perfect. Being Italian, we love to eat. When you go to a great restaurant it begins the minute you open the door, the ambience, you're handed your program, you're led to your seat. The orchestra's up on the stage. There's a menu laid out for you. I've prepared a little Shostakovich to open the meal a little wispy overture to get you excited about it, then I'm going to bring you on a tour of Spain with Falla's Gardens of Spain, a lovely, romantic joyful exuberant yet melancholy and mysterious work that's going to set you up for the next course which is Stravinsky's very pointed and colorful almost Picasso-like work, the Firebird. And we're going to march it home on the Appian Way as the Roman Soldiers come through the Pines of Rome with the sun bursting behind them as victorious leading us back to Rome, Italy. I mean, this is a perfect meal. It should satisfy everybody's musical diet and put us all in a great mood. I mean this is how I look at it. You simply have to experience it. You just have to come to the concert hall. I've prepared the meal. Bon Appetit.
So how does a visiting conductor make connections with a beautifully fresh performance of these great musical warhorses on the Nature's Glory Program?
Since I'm guest conducting and this happens a lot because I travel a lot between here and Italy. It's a matter of getting to know the orchestra first. I need to hear their sound, their style. They need to offer me something so that I can begin to develop a style and a sound, a unity between ourselves. It's a quick honeymoon period. I mean in fifteen minutes or twenty minutes I have to be assessing what we have to work with here. Everybody has to bring their best game and lay it out in front of me and we're going to see what we have. It's like good cooking. They have to prepare themselves like good spices. Everyone knows their part. They're all masters of their own particular instrument. I'm looking at the recipe with Shostokovich, Resphighi, Stravinsky and Falla have orchestrated for me. My job is to realize these recipes, these scores and take all these individual spices that are so well prepared and fresh and them put them together and let them simmer over the week of rehearsals so by the time we arrive at the performance on Saturday it's delicious, it's wonderful, it's spicy, it's romantic, it's lush, it's warm, it's agitato, it's gotta have all the elements that are called for in these recipes, these great orchestral warhorses, as you put it.
Rafaelle Ponti is in his 12th season with the Gennessee Symphony Orchestra. He says that this year the Orchestra is in the black and ticket sales are up. He calls it connecting with the community. He's brought visual artists on stage to paint what the music is bringing to their imaginations. Dancers, opera, innovations that don't detract from the experience of the central artform: the music. So why would he look at the Paducah job? He's heard through the business that the Paducah Symphony is a very good ensemble. He's attracted by the cultural ambience of the Atomic City, the galleries, the artistic community, the relaxed atmosphere of a mid-sized city.
I like the idea of this bluegrass and the beautiful culture that is being preserved there a real Kentucky feel and the fact that barbecue this is exciting for me. This is such a cultural rich place yet it is not full of strip malls and over saturated in change. It seems like it's really cultured and a jewel and I would love to take this community for another journey and take an orchestra like this and make it really special inside itself. This is exciting.
Rafaelle Ponti conducts the Paducah Symphony Orchestra's Nature's Glory concert Saturday, February 20th at the Carson Center. In addition to the program, the evening includes a competitive flower show and works of art on display, offered for viewing and for sale by regional artists. For the Front Page, I'm Kate Lochte.