This interview is from SDPB's daily public-affairs show, In the Moment, hosted by Lori Walsh.
South Dakota Symphony Orchestra soloists take center stage in the February 12 performance at the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls. The performance is livestreamed by SDPB at SD.net.
Maestro Delta David Gier stopped by the SDPB Kirby Family studio in Sioux Falls for a conversation about Vivaldi's "Four Seasons."
The following transcript has been autogenerated.
Lori Walsh :
Many people are familiar with this music. How come? Why is it so in-our-lives?
Delta David Gier:
Even if people don't think they are (familiar), they are. It's been used commercially so much. There was a movie made called The Four Seasons, starring Alan Alda back in the 80s.
Lori Walsh :
I didn't know that.
Delta David Gier:
And it was built around this piece of music. It was a comedy. It's also in commercials. The movements are very famous basically because it's been commercialized.
Lori Walsh :
Tell me where it came from. How long has it been around?
Delta David Gier:
Oh gosh. Since the 17th century. Vivaldi, very interesting guy, he was known as the red-haired priest. He actually was the music director in a school for girls, an orphanage. And he had them all playing violin. Ao a lot of the music that he wrote was for that setting. The "Four Seasons" are actually a set of four concertos, complete concertos, fast, slow, fast, three movements. Each of them are about 10 minutes long, so it's not a big to-do, but it's for a violin soloist accompanied by other string players and a harpsichord. That's what you'll hear is each of these four pieces.
Lori Walsh :
And it's beautiful. It's lovely.
Delta David Gier:
Yeah. And energetic and exciting.
And there's actually a program that goes with it that Vivaldi wrote in the score. In the winter, he's written music, it says "like slipping on the ice," "like your teeth are chattering." And then in the slow movement, there's "sitting by the fire." It's really quite something.
Lori Walsh :
That's interesting.
Delta David Gier:
It's very, very evocative music.
Lori Walsh :
And we get to hear from some of our greats. Tell us who's featured in this concert.
Delta David Gier:
Each of our four principal violinists will play one season. Doosook Kim, our concert master, Elizabeth York, our associate concert master, Magdalena Modzelewska, our principal second violinist and Ashley Ng, our associate principal second violin. Each one of them will be soloists. And they'll not only be playing the concerto, but they're going to lead the orchestra. I'm taking the second half off.
Lori Walsh :
You'll take the second half off.
Delta David Gier:
Yeah. Yeah.
Lori Walsh :
What does that preparation for this look like then?
Delta David Gier:
Well, it's going to be individualized. We start rehearsing very soon for this. Basically, I'll be there and they can use me. And I'll offer my ideas, but they're free to rehearse the orchestra as they see fit. I mean, there's a limited amount of time that each one of them has to do that. It's sort of a guided experience for them. I just love featuring our own musicians in this way, giving them these kinds of opportunities.
Lori Walsh :
The audience loves that, too. I mean, these people have been around for a while. How long has DooSook Kim been with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra? You intersect, I think.
Delta David Gier:
Well, yeah, she was here before me, so probably 25 years. Something like that.
Lori Walsh :
It's remarkable.
Delta David Gier:
This is a very good orchestra. And it's a good position to have, I mean, it seems people might be surprised, but the South Dakota Symphony is actually in the top 10% of American orchestras, in terms of budget size, in terms of quality-
Lori Walsh :
It's not a surprise if they listen to this show.
Delta David Gier:
No, no, but it's-
Lori Walsh :
They know that by now.
Delta David Gier:
It's yet another about Sioux Falls, South Dakota, that you wouldn't expect.
Lori Walsh :
Yeah.
Delta David Gier:
I mean, that's why I came here from New York. It's like, "Seriously? South Dakota's doing this? Norwegian Lutherans love music this much?" Oh yes, they do.
Lori Walsh :
Why now? Why program this now? Why do we need to hear this now?
Delta David Gier:
It's the dog days of winter. We need a lift. I mean, Vivaldi is nothing if not a lift. It's just really-
Lori Walsh :
I need a lift.
Delta David Gier:
Right?
Lori Walsh :
It's Valentine's day, I mean, so a great date night.
Delta David Gier:
It absolutely is. Absolutely a great date night.
Lori Walsh :
All right. This is not the only thing that's on the program.
Delta David Gier:
No. The first half of the program is quite different. We feature two women composers and two African American composers on the first half of the program. You have a program like Vivaldi Four Seasons, it's a big war horse. What do you put with that? And so they're all string players on the stage with the exception of the harpsichord, which you could say is also a string instrument. What kind of repertoire are you going to do? And are you going to further your mission with this opportunity to pair something with a war horse? I mean, the answer is yes.
Delta David Gier:
And so we're always thinking in this way. There are significant women composers. There are now significant African American composers. I'll give one example. George Walker, who will play his Lyric for Strings. George Walker was the first African American to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music, which is arguably our best conservatory in this country. And he was the first African American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize, so really a significant person in our history.
Lori Walsh :
Which is a bit of surprise because your friend, our friend, Joe Horowitz, has a new book about Black composers.
Delta David Gier:
Yes.
Lori Walsh :
And I can't remember what it's called. Dvorak's-
Delta David Gier:
Prophecy.
Lori Walsh :
Prophecy. Thank you.
Delta David Gier:
Yes, that's right.
Lori Walsh :
Why did it take so long for us to recognize, in America, the power of Black music?
Delta David Gier:
Well, we did realize it in popular music, in jazz and R & B.
Lori Walsh :
In classical music though.
Delta David Gier:
Yeah. But, in classical music, and this is the point of Joseph Horowitz's book, that American music should have been white ... I mean, black, I'm sorry, black and Native American. Dvorak's Prophecy, after spending three years in this country, was that Americans have everything that they need to develop their own national music in the spirituals of the American Negro and the ... he was saying this in the 1890s, so Negro wasn't a bad word back then ... and also in the songs of the Native American. He spent time in Spillville, Iowa, as well as in New York City because there's a big Czech community there in Spillville, right?
Delta David Gier:
I mean, there were some people at the beginning of the 20th century that took that advice and there were some African American composers, which Joseph Horowitz is trying to bring to the fore, like Dawson and some of these other composers who were forgotten because Aaron Copeland came along, Leonard Bernstein came along. And they went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, and they took a very European flavor. They went the Stravinsky route. They went this way to try to be in that world, that European world. And the whole 20th century classical music story is basically the European nest of American music. Look at all of the foreign conductors. And only playing foreign composers. We never really developed our national music.
Lori Walsh :
But, it's not too late.
Delta David Gier:
No, it's not.
Lori Walsh :
It's still the work that's being done here in South Dakota with the Lakota Music Project and other initiatives. We've talked about this extensively.
Delta David Gier:
Yeah. Also, Jessie Montgomery, who's going to open our concert. Jessie Montgomery is a young African American woman violinist and composer. And she's now the composer and residence in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She's curating new music concerts and writing music for them. And she's now become a very important American voice, so our audiences need to get to know her.
Lori Walsh :
Yeah. Tell me about those pieces, Starburst and Strum.
Delta David Gier:
Well, they're string pieces. She's a violinist. And so she's a Sphinx artist, so-
Lori Walsh :
I don't know what that means.
Delta David Gier:
Well, so Sphinx is a 25-year-old organization based in Detroit, the mission of which is to give opportunity to people of color in the classical music. It's educational. There's a competition. There's help with job placement, auditioning, and all of that for 25 years now.
A lot of the progress that's been made for people of color, including Hispanic, as well as African American, has been spearheaded by Sphinx. She grew up with that and she was writing for these people, these players. These pieces came out of her opportunity to write pieces for them. And they're exciting. Starburst is pretty much what you would expect it to be. Very energetic. Strum is also using all these string instruments and all their virtuosic ways. They're both of them rather short. All these pieces on the first half are rather short, short and energetic pieces.
Lori Walsh :
Yeah. Anna Klein, tell me a little bit about her.
Delta David Gier:
Anna Klein is British, but she's been living in this country for quite a while. And she's really made her career here, as a composer, very successful. Now, she's being played all over the world, particularly this piece, Within Her Arms, which she wrote for her mother. And it's for, oh, golly, I want to say 12, 13, no, 15 solo strings. Everybody's got their own part, so there's not a first violin section, per se, because everybody's got their own part. It's a very unique soundscape, a lot of sighing, a lot of atmospheric stuff. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's just beautiful.
Lori Walsh :
Oh, it sounds like a really lovely evening.
Delta David Gier:
Oh, I think so. I think so. All this music is very listenable.
Lori Walsh :
Sure.
Delta David Gier:
Yeah.
Lori Walsh :
Speaking of, how did the world premiere at the last concert go with Paul Sanchez?
Delta David Gier:
Speaking of, maybe not so listenable.
Lori Walsh :
Well, I mean-
Delta David Gier:
It depends. It just depends on your expectation. If you're an adventurous listener, this was David Gordon's Concerto for Retuned Piano and Orchestra, which we did about three weeks ago. It's such a unique sound world, and David talked about it with the audience, so we set it up, but well, you heard it.
Lori Walsh :
I did.
Delta David Gier:
I mean, it's ... I actually said to the orchestra in rehearsal, "Has anybody ever played anything like this ever in your lives?" And nobody. Nobody. Yeah. And the reactions ran the gamut from people who thought this is the most interesting thing they have ever done to people who said they felt oppressed.
Lori Walsh :
Oppressed.
Delta David Gier:
Oppressed. Yeah. I had two orchestras musicians say that they felt it.
Lori Walsh :
Yeah. That's interesting.
Delta David Gier:
Somebody said they felt trapped.
Lori Walsh :
Trapped. Confined.
Delta David Gier:
Yeah.
Lori Walsh :
Interesting.
Delta David Gier:
But then, you talk ... particularly people who were not familiar with classical music thought that it was just fascinating. I mean, he set it up by saying, "I think of this music as a score to a film that's never been made." And the other description was music from a culture that never existed.
Lori Walsh :
I got that.
Delta David Gier:
Right.
Lori Walsh :
I thought it was very visual in some ways. I mean, normally, it's fun for me to watch the orchestra play. And in this case, I thought it would be really fun to watch the percussionists, but I enjoyed it more when I closed my eyes for the first time. I wanted to not know who was playing what. I wanted to not know what the instruments were. I just wanted to know the sounds. And then later on, when I found out, oh, so and so was playing this, I'm like, "Huh, that's interesting," but I just enjoyed being in the space.
Delta David Gier:
Well, it does what our-
Lori Walsh :
Until I got tired.
Delta David Gier:
Yeah. Right. Until you get tired.
Lori Walsh :
Until my brain shut down.
Delta David Gier:
It was 35 minutes, right? So, yeah.
Lori Walsh :
It's beautiful.
Delta David Gier:
No, I get that. I get that. I absolutely do. But, it does what art supposed to do in the sense that it provokes people because three weeks later, I'm still running into people who, they only want to talk about that piece. They're not talking about Rachmaninoff. That's gorgeous. Okay, great. That's fine. Okay. Let's talk about David Gordon. Who the heck is this guy and why did he compose this piece? The history of art is filled with those, right?
Lori Walsh :
Yeah. And so do you ... I think the answer to this is yes, but hopefully, you'll say more about it. There's room for these new composers that we're going to hear in this upcoming concert. People like David Gordon, who we've already heard, people like Jessie Montgomery, George Walker, Anna Klein ... you don't have to replace one with the other. It's not the old taking over ... or the new taking over the old and we're burning sheet music here, right? There's room for both in this really wonderful way.
Delta David Gier:
Yes. It's absolutely true. The pie isn't fixed at a certain size. We can increase the pie. I've had this conversation many times with people, how you listen to a familiar piece with fresh ears after you've heard a new piece. If you hear a Beethoven symphony on the second half, if you had a contemporary piece on the first half, you listen to it differently than you would if you just heard Mozart on the first half, which is the same sound world. Yes. There is room ... mean, you look back at music history and up until the 20th century, almost all the music was new. They weren't playing old war horses in 1850. They came to here new music.
Lori Walsh :
Some of it caused a riot.
Delta David Gier:
Absolutely.
Lori Walsh :
Literally.
Delta David Gier:
Absolutely.
Lori Walsh :
And so that music had people throwing chairs and running around.
Delta David Gier:
And people very passionate, anti-Wagner, anti-Brahms. Mueller was just right out. And of course, Stravinsky Rite of Spring, forget about it. We're going to riot. We're just going to bloody some noses here. Just wish people would that worked up at a concert.
Lori Walsh :
Maybe not, maybe not. Well, probably not in this one, because this is-
Delta David Gier:
No, this concert this weekend will not have bloody noses.
Lori Walsh :
Take a date. Bring someone you care about to hear Vivaldi's Four Seasons with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra and then some wonderful African American composers, female composers. What a great program.
Delta David Gier:
Yeah. I'm looking forward to it.
Lori Walsh :
Thanks for being here.
Delta David Gier:
Thank you.
