By Montague Gammon III
Hampton Roads’ two most accomplished, most famous and finest (classical) musicians meld their talents April 30 at Norfolk State’s Wilder Performing Arts Center for the Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s “Happy Birthday, Hailstork” concert. JoAnn Falletta conducts seven works by Adolphus Cunningham Hailstork III, PhD, thirteen days after he turns a still creative 85.
We caught up with the peripatetic Falletta by phone on Easter, just hours before she flew to Puerto Rico, to conduct an “all American program with the Puerto Rico Symphony.” (Copeland, Barber, and Bernstein.) “This is a very big deal for Dolph,” she said, adding lots praise for Hailstork as a composer, colleague and friend.
They go back, she said, to when she and Hailstork both arrived here in ’91, she as the Symphony’s new Music Director and he as its Composer in Residence.
She said, “He was writing the piano concerto for us my first year. I was amazed by all of the great pieces he gave us. He wrote it and we played it and what other orchestra has that kind of privilege? To have a great, great composer…just writing things for us out of love for the orchestra…so generous, so cheerful about making music together. It was one of the greatest gifts of my life as a musician.”
Asked about how she ranked Hailstork among all composers of the 20th and 21st Centuries, Falletta said, “He’s right up at the top. He keeps quietly turning out wonderful music. He’s just an amazingly prolific, modest, unassuming genius.”
She remarked on the works programmed::
“‘Fanfare on Amazing Grace’ has been played so many thousands of times! It’s just fantastic; it’s just great.”
It’s a brass heavy, soaring and attention grabbing work that fits with something Hailstork said in an online interview on the Atlantic Music Critic site: He wants to start his pieces in a way that captures the attention of the audience; this Fanfare will admirably serve that function for his Birthday celebration. [4 minutes]
“An American Port of Call:” “It’s describing Norfolk, so how could we not put that on our program?!”
Army veteran Hailstork, who rose to the rank of Captain in just two years of service, makes Norfolk sound exciting, richly varied, and every bit as worthwhile a port of call as Bernstein’s instrumental version of “On the Town” made Manhattan. [8 ½ minutes]
“Piano Concerto No. 1: “The star piece…the greatest American piano concerto written since Gershwin.” That’s an opinion, Falletta said, that she shares with soloist, the internationally praised Stewart Goodyear.
“It’s Dolph’s voice, in that it’s a kind of classism that shows his great respect for learning and studying Beethoven and Mozart and Haydn but it also shows his love of blues, of jazz. All of that’s in there in the most organic way. It’s not pieced on or put in gratuitously, it’s just his voice. It’s very beautiful because most of all it says something to human beings that makes them feel good. And there’s plenty of virtuosity in that and Stewart is a great virtuoso…It’s the true voice of an American composer, not being self conscious, not planning to sound in any way, but just giving us what is in his heart.” [24 minutes]
After intermission, the concert resumes with another military linked work, “To Those Who Serve.” Falletta termed it “Really a tribute to the Navy and, by expansion, for all the people who work to serve us, to guard us, to make our country safe.”
“Given where we are, in Norfolk, in a Festival that is closely tied to NATO, and we are about to celebrate our county’s 250th Anniversary, I wanted to do something to honor the military…Doph served in the Army,” she remarks, going on to add, “It uses “Eternal Father Strong to Save,” it obviously shows his joy at living in a city that is home to the Navy and celebrates them [with] what he has in his heart for those who serve. [ca. 7 minutes]
“Celebration,” Hailstork said in that Atlanta online interview, was he first of his compositions to be played by a major organization, though he claimed it has “fallen by the wayside for other easier pieces… It’s a challenging little thing in ⅞ meter and calls for a level of skill.” He described Celebration“ as “nice and bright and happy;” Falletta called it “an explosion of joy.” She noted, “He wrote it for the 200th Anniversary of the US.” Both related how he wrote it on commission in 1975 for a series of Bicentennial short works underwritten by the JC Penney company. Falletta said it is “rhythmically very interesting, filled with high spirits…it’s fast and everyone is playing and it’s almost perpetual motion so it’s really a celebration… just a very joyous, forward momentum, fun piece.” [3 minutes]
By contrast, she calls “Still Holding On” “A very deep piece…very emotional…a wonderful piece, just 16 minutes long; one of his recent pieces [with] moments of great pathos.” Commissioned by the LA Philharmonic for a 2019 concert “saluting [Harlem Renaissance composer] William Grant Still” (LA phil program notes) where it got it its world premiere. It’s the first movement of Hailstork’s 4th Symphony, which is titled “Survive.”
Hailstork wrote for those Los Angeles program notes, “This first movement opens with a quiet, short introduction, followed by a duet for oboe and cello (two instruments that Still played). A suspenseful transition section leads to the conclusion, which features the African-American spiritual ‘Hold On.’ “
What Falletta called a “4 minute closer,” Hailstork’s “Finale from Done Made My Vow,” part of a longer work for chorus and orchestra called, of course, called “Done Made My Vow”, will end this local 85th Birthday Celebration with the instruments of the Virginia Symphony joined by the voices of the Norfolk State University Chorus.
But nationally, the celebration will continue; the radio show Performance Today will be recording the concert for later broadcast, further celebrating the man who gave the double Grammy winning Falletta, American Public Media’s first Classical Woman of the Year (2019), Britain based Bachtrack.org’s “World’s Favorite Conductor,” what she still regards as “one of her greatest gifts in her life as a musician,” and who keeps creating even as he leaves his 85th birthday in the past.
WANT TO GO?
“Happy Birthday, Hailstork”
JoAnn Falletta, conductor
Stewart Goodyear, piano
Virginia Symphony Orchestra
Norfolk State University Chorus
Adolphus Hailstork: Fanfare on Amazing Grace
Adolphus Hailstork: An American Port of Call
Adolphus Hailstork: Piano Concerto No. 1
Adolphus Hailstork: To Those Who Serve
Adolphus Hailstork: Celebration
Adolphus Hailstork: Still Holding On
Adolphus Hailstork: Finale from Done Made My Vow
7:30 p.m., Thurs. April 30
Norfolk State University Wilder Performing Arts Center
virginiasymphony.org
747-892-6366