Podium Power: JoAnn Falletta Conducts Electricity at the Granada
You’re at the symphony, so your socks match for once. You’ve made several such concessions to high art and anxiously await the concert. Finally, the enormous, pleated curtain slowly rises with the seriousness and gravity of stone, the audience bursts into applause, and here we have a hundred-plus musicians in their finery, staring out at you and wielding their ornate little noisemakers. Then the conductor walks out. A hush ripples through the audience like a breeze whispering across the surface of a pond. Were the conductor to lift off from the stage and fly about the room on gossamer wings, the audience would be no more awed than they are at this moment. The conductor! Where on Earth do these creatures come from? What do they do when they get home? What foods do conductors eat? Sandwiches? Froot Loops? Do they sleep with their wands tucked under their pillows, Harry Potter-style?
“I’ve started to think of conducting as a kind of inverted pyramid,” Maestra JoAnn Falletta says avidly, “where the musicians are on the top, and you are balancing what they’re doing in a way that that helps them be excellent.” One of the most lauded and decorated conductors of our time, JoAnn Falletta is also one of the most happily approachable. Possessor of two Grammys and a host of other luminous classical honors known to cognoscenti, Falletta is the celebrated music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic (following nearly 30 years with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra), and a member of the venerated American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
For all that, speaking with Falletta is like chatting up a pal. Does she remember taking her very first shot at the mystery of conducting? Hoo-boy. Does she ever. It took place at Mannes School of Music in NYC, now part of The New School there. “I was 18 years old. This was the first time conducting the full orchestra. We’d practiced with the piano, we’d practiced with a very small group – you know, four people. But this was the first time with the full orchestra, and I was conducting ‘Scheherazade.’” Eighteen-year-old Falletta minutely gestured with her baton and music swelled. “I had no idea what would happen, but I gave an upbeat and they started to play! I was just… astonished!” The piece progressed and young JoAnn began swooning to the music, as one does. Unfortunately, she was driving. “I don’t know what happened exactly, but I was listening to this beautiful orchestra, and as I was kind of following them, they were following me…” This downward spiral slowed the piece to a crawl, like an old watch unwinding. Finally, the musicians stopped playing. One can imagine the bemused scrutiny of some 240 eyeballs staring young Falletta down. “I remember my teacher was very upset. ‘JoAnn – you’re supposed to be leading them, not the other way around!’” The memory prompts laughter from this world-class conductor. She seems to have moved past the trauma.
Falletta will be conducting the Music Academy fellows at the Granada this Saturday at 7:30 pm. Ravel’s “La valse” and Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances, Op. 45”are on the rhapsodic menu, as well as Roberto Sierra’s sparkling “Fandangos.”
“La valse,”written in the wake of WWI [“The war to end all wars”] evolves from impressionistic waltz to expressionistic, melodious vibrancy as it captures the societal upheaval of that world-warping, historical moment. Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances, Op. 45,”is the Russian master’s final major composition, and is considered by some to contain in certain of its themes, some of which Sergei quotes from his own earlier works, a sense of farewell. He would pass away three years later.
The Russian émigré had departed a turbulent Russia after the 1917 Revolution, settling in the U.S. while maintaining his Russian culture and heritage – to the occasional detriment of his productivity. Completing “Symphonic Dances,” the man was under deadline pressure and had fled to the Lenox Hotel in comparatively mellow Buffalo, New York, to finish the piece. “He explained to friends that in NYC, his cultural world obliged lavish entertainment,” Falletta says. “If you were of Russian heritage, your home was always open. He always had lots of visitors, late suppers…” Rachmaninoff had promised the piece to Eugene Ormandy, friend and music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. “Rachmaninoff was really rushing on this, and he’d even warned them saying, ‘I don’t know. I’ve had a very heavy performance schedule, but I’ll try and have it for you.’” She pauses for two beats, like an excited friend setting up the reveal. “And he did!” Falletta’s delighted exclamation offers us a glimpse of the almighty conductor as Beatlesque Sergei fan. “He completed it in Buffalo. He loved the Philadelphia Orchestra, and he wanted to give them this gift on time. So every time I pass the Lenox hotel, I think of Rachmaninoff by himself up in his room, happily and quietly orchestrating the ‘Symphonic Dances.’”
On her appointment as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, JoAnn Falletta became the first female conductor to lead a major American ensemble. She has been festooned with nearly every recognition the former Symphonic Boy’s Club has to offer. Her enthrallment with the classical music world is only deepening. “After so many years of conducting, I feel I can sense an orchestra’s personality and how to give them the best kind of guidance and leadership that I can. But I never really feel like ‘OK, I totally know this and there’s nothing new I can learn.’”
Conductor. Is there a more apt noun for someone who spends a lifetime being edified by an art form and conveying that forward? Falletta has been conducting this lyrical charge of electricity called classical music for decades. She likes it. A lot. “When people ask about conducting, I tell them if you’re not excited about spending your entire life studying and getting closer to the score, this is not a profession for you. If you really love reading scores, if you really love the repertoire, this is a great adventure. You’re always discovering something new.”
JoAnn Falletta conducts the Academy Festival Orchestra this Saturday, July 29, at 7:30 pm at the Granada Theatre. Visit https://musicacademy.org for tickets and more information. Come Meet the Conductor before the concert at Sullivan Goss from 6-7 pm ($25)!
