Eugene Symphony’s new conductor By Sharon Schuman
Photos by Steve Smith
After Danail Rachev gave the last cutoff for Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 on March 19, the crowd in Silva Hall, stunned for a moment, erupted like football fans at a touchdown. The orchestra joined in the cheers. The new conductor and music director of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra had scored.
Starting in the fall of 2009, for 14 weeks a year Danail (Dah-nah-EEL) will be in town, as often as possible with his wife, soprano Elizabeth Racheva. The rest of the year he will globe-trot as a guest conductor and serve as assistant conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Rachev’s path to Eugene began with his childhood in Shumen, Bulgaria, another university town of about 100,000, surrounded by hills and isolated enough from bigger cities to grow its own arts culture. He discovered the piano at age 5, but was no slave to practicing. He was also a good student at the mathematical school and a soccer player. He was a teenager before he started listening seriously to recordings of piano concertos and going to concerts. At one of them he noticed the guy on the podium, and in a sense, began to think about playing a larger instrument—the whole orchestra.
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After a two-year stint in the Bulgarian equivalent of the National Guard, Rachev entered the conservatory in Sofia, where he got his first chance at conducting. It was a student choir, perfect preparation for his first paying gig as a conductor: a tour in Germany with a choir that performed in a new town every night.
Rachev won a scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, where he was able to try his hand at conducting strings and winds every week with an orchestra devoted solely to the conducting program. There he studied with Gustav Meier, the legendary teacher of conductors—including Marin Alsop, a Eugene predecessor on the podium, who now conducts the Baltimore Symphony. At Peabody, Rachev also met Elizabeth Davis, a soprano who needed someone to coach her on the pronunciation of Russian lyrics for an upcoming recital. They married in 2003, and the next year had a working honeymoon in Baltimore: he conducted Aaron Copland’s opera “The Tender Land,” and she sang a leading role.
When Rachev came to Eugene in 2008 as one of three finalists for the ESO position, he gave a free concert in the Hult Center’s Silva Hall. Even after two short rehearsals, the buzz among musicians was that Rachev was “The Real Deal.” His passion, conviction, humility, and unfailing musicality won over the players, the audience, and the conductor search committee.
When Rachev returned as guest conductor in March 2009, he knew what he wanted. At one rehearsal, leading the orchestra through the Scherzo movement of Tchaikovsky’s symphony, he said: “This is chamber music. Just listen. Don’t let me get in the way.” During the finale, he challenged us, “The energy must come from you!” Rachev belongs to a new breed of conductors. He says, “The age of conductors as absolute dominators of performance is over.” Collaborative, demanding, yet fun, he initiates a new era in the musical life of Eugene.
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That era begins September 24, 2009, when audiences will hear Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, “New World Symphony.” They will also hear John Adams’ “Dharma at Big Sur,” commissioned by the L.A. Philharmonic for the opening of the Disney Auditorium in 2003. Soloist Tracy Silverman, who gave the world premier on a bright red five-string electric violin, will be here. Already in the know about tie-dye at the Saturday Market, Rachev says with a smile: “This is the quintessential West Coast piece, perfect for Eugene. Classical music changes lives—come to our concerts, and you will see.”
Sharon Schuman is assistant concertmaster of the Eugene Opera Orchestra, artistic director of Chamber Music Amici, and a violinist with Oregon Mozart Players and the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra. She played with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra for the concerts conducted by Danail Rachev.
EUGENE SYMPHONY 2009-10 SCHEDULE
Concerts at 8 pm, tickets at 541/682-5000
eugenesymphony.org/season/current_season_0910.php
New School UO School of Music and Dance is ready to rock By Joseph Lieberman
Photos by Eric Naslund
If the exuberant chorus of comments emanating from students and faculty is any indication, the recent makeover of the UO School of Music and Dance has been truly revitalizing. Renovations that were begun in the spring of 2007 have resulted in 20 new practice rooms, freshly completed academic and performance wings, and scores of new pianos and other concert instruments. For some students, the atmosphere has become so up-tempo that even the corridors feel like they’re pulsing with a 4/4 beat.
“Our rehearsal spaces are acoustically beautiful!” enthuses John Dodge, a first-year grad student going for his masters in horn performance. “These rooms love the sound of the horn.” Dodge auditioned last year in such major musical centers as Boston and Chicago, but nonetheless chose UO, he says, because “I knew I could count on having immediate access to practice rooms with excellent pianos.”
Eric Sweeney, a junior in vocal performance, has been equally inspired by the alterations. “The rejuvenation of existing buildings, combined with completely new additions, has really invigorated students,” Sweeney says. “When you see people walking in the halls now, they’re just happier, and genuinely excited.”
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Many of the rooms used to be “kind of dreary and depressing,” Sweeney remarks, “but now they’re warm, bright, and inviting. The classrooms are really 21st century, with all the cutting-edge technology that implies.”
Brad Foley, dean of the school, couldn’t agree more. “Some of the buildings were designed in the 1920s, and their last upgrades were in the ’70s,” he says. “Students in search of practice space had to engage in—well, let’s call it ‘creative solutions.’ You could find them assiduously playing instruments in the rest rooms, stairwells, elevators, even outside in the nearby Pioneer Cemetery.”
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The long wait for a slot in the limited number of practice spaces has been eliminated, with the new rooms ensuring almost no delays. With the addition of three new classrooms and, in Foley’s judgment, “an orchestral and wind facility that is one of the finest acoustical spaces in the entire state of Oregon,” there is little cause for discord. The new orchestral space can accommodate more than 120 students, or be reorganized with little effort into a performance venue. There’s also Wi-Fi throughout the entire facility, and every recently added or upgraded room has been wired to connect with a state-of-the-art recording studio. “It’s not just the technology and architecture,” Foley beams. “It’s the aesthetics. More attractive, professional, inviting, and visually interesting. Everyone gets a better environment. Everybody wins.” The remodel joins a cluster of other high-profile construction projects on campus, including an expansion and renovation of the Miller Theatre, completed last fall. The facility now enjoys an integrated complex of three theaters plus lobbies, shops, studios, and teaching spaces.
Even the outdoor environment at the music school has been touched by the grace of the muses. Foley points to three sculptures, entitled Cadenza, Fandango, and Calypso, in the Duprey courtyard just outside his office window. “The sculptures were designed by Montana artist Richard Swanson as ‘musical phrases,’” Foley says, “meant to integrate his free-standing artwork with the various sounds that migrate into the courtyard by chance.”
For faculty members, the process of renewal has been even more dynamic. “Previously, lacking much in the way of sound isolation, we had to alternate faculty rooms between those who taught instruments and those who taught other subjects,” says Foley. “Now, with 28 new soundproofed office-studios, morale has soared. Instructors feel they have adequate space to be both efficient and creative.”
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One thing that hasn’t changed is the beehive of activity that whirs through every corner of this school on a daily basis. A serenade of sounds invariably fills the halls with notes and bars from brassy marching bands, delicate vocal harmonics, avant-garde jazz ensembles, classical string quartets, and gospel choirs.
This hodgepodge of musical mayhem might lead the casual observer to anticipate cacophony. Instead, the vibrancy of this place somehow fashions dissonance into harmony—a blend of youth, vitality, and practiced proficiency.
Now, at last, these talented young students have a facility worthy of their creative aptitude.
Renovations that were begun in the spring of 2007 have resulted in 20 new practice rooms, freshly completed academic and performance wings, and scores of new pianos and other concert instruments. For some students, the atmosphere has become so up-tempo that even the corridors feel like they’re pulsing with a 4/4 beat.
