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| The Manila Symphony Orchestra |
Featuring:
Jayson
Pagtakhan, oboe
Randolf
Lopez, clarinet
Ariel
Perez, bassoon
Celso
de Leon, horn
Manila
Symphony Orchestra
Arturo
Molina, conductor
Programme:
Franz
Joseph Haydn Symphony No. 88 in G
major, Hob. 1/88
Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart Sinfonia Concertante
in E flat major for Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, and Bassoon, K. 297b
Ludwig
van Beethoven Symphony No. 1 in C
major, Op. 21
The
Manila Symphony Orchestra’s concert at the Santiago Francisco Hall marking
their 88th year was a classical music overload. The orchestra’s
music director and principal conductor Arturo Molina prepared an evening packed
with classical era works by Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and
Ludwig van Beethoven. The concert also gave the spotlight to four of the MSO’s
musicians namely oboist Jasyon Pagtakhan, clarinetist Randolf Lopez, bassoonist
Ariel Perez, and horn player Celso de Leon.
The
concert started with Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 in G major, Hob.
1/88. The 88th year of the MSO played a huge part in the selection
of this symphony among the 106 that Haydn composed. To make the audience
appreciate the music in the concert more, the MSO’s executive director Jefrey
Solares took to the stage and briefly introduced the pieces. Solares also mentioned
that Haydn is credited to be the father of the symphony and that he somewhat
cooked up the form and bunched up the movements that make up the symphony as we
know it today. It may sound complicated at first but Haydn’s work, specifically
this one, is anything but. The movements only featured a single theme, later
developed before returning back to it, which can be recalled very easily.
Things
did get more complicated with the next piece which was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Sinfonia
Concertante in E flat major for Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, and Bassoon, K. 297b.
First of all, this piece is still in question whether this was composed by
Mozart at all. It sounds like a Mozart piece but there is no clear evidence
that would refute all doubts as to who the real composer of this piece really
was. Solares told the audience to listen carefully to the soloists, oboist Jasyon
Pagtakhan, clarinetist Randolf Lopez, bassoonist Ariel Perez, and horn player Celso
de Leon and take note of how the balance between the four was carefully
crafted. And he also mentioned that in this piece, there would be a secondary
theme which was a development during the classical period.
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| Jefrey Solares prior to raffling off an iPad Mini to one lucky MSO subscriber |
Lastly,
the orchestra performed Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C major,
Op. 21, a work that pushed the boundaries of music in the classical period
before going into the romantic era. Solares then explained that one of the
innovations that Beethoven introduced to the symphony was the speeding up of
the third movement, traditionally a stately dance called the minuet, into what
would later be the scherzo which is a joke in Italian. It is only fitting that
the concert was capped with this piece since everything went full circle near the
end. During the final movement of this symphony, Beethoven directly took the theme
from the final movement of Haydn’s 88th symphony, the same one that
was performed by the orchestra at the start of the concert.
By
the end of the Beethoven symphony, I already had my fill of music from the
classical era but the audience certainly did not as they demanded more. The
orchestra obliged with another Mozart piece, the Overture from The Marriage of Figaro. I admit that it was too much
classical era music for me in one concert and that it made me want to listen to
some romantic music afterwards. But this concert that marked the end of MSO’s Color Your World season did make me comprehend
once again how music progressed during the classical era.
