Symphony Pro Musica ready for return to live performance in Hudson and Worcester

Symphony Pro Musica had reached some impressive heights midway through its 37th season by performing Gustav Mahler's 3rd Symphony in early February 2020 at Hudson High School and St. Mark's School in Southborough.

Mahler's 3rd is the longest symphony in the standard repertoire requiring a large orchestra as well as a chorus. It's also a sublime work. "It was a real stretch for us but a triumphant one," said Symphony Pro Musica founder, music director and conductor Mark Churchill. "People love that music and I love it."

It turned out, "We ended well," Churchill noted. The remaining concerts of the season in March and May 2020 were canceled because of the pandemic, so ending the season.

The May performances in 2020 would have included Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto performed by guest cellist Zlatomir Fung of Westborough, who has scaled heights as an award-winning soloist while being featured by SPM at several stages along the way in his young career.

Symphony Pro Musica is an acclaimed nonprofit regional community orchestra with a home base in Hudson that dates back to 1983. Churchill is also a cellist and educator and dean emeritus at the New England Conservatory.

Now it is time for starting well again as Symphony Pro Musica presents “Return to Live Performance!” — its first concert of the 2021-22 season and first live in-person indoor performances in nearly two years.

Concert performances will be at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13 at Hudson High School, and 4 p.m. Nov. 14 at Mechanics Hall in Worcester. There will be a preconcert lecture 45 minutes prior to each performance.

The program will include Fung and SPM finally performing Elgar’s haunting Cello Concerto. The concert will open with fellow British composer Sir William Walton's quintessentially English “Crown Imperial March." And the orchestra will also feature the long neglected “Negro Folk Symphony” of early 20th-century American composer William L. Dawson.

Meanwhile, coming to Mechanics Hall sees SPM reaching to a possible new destination for some of its regular season concerts.

Regardless of where, Churchill didn't have to do any rallying of the musicians of SPM to get them ready to return to performance.

"I'm really happy to say that the orchestra came back like gangbusters. It feels good to be back with live music-making," Churchill said.

During the darkest days of the pandemic, SPM members had held weekly Zoom meetings.

"It was a chance for people to be together," Churchill said. Indeed, "They got to know each other so much more."

Mini-concerts were presented from the homes of some musicians online on SPM's Facebook channel.

Then in June, Churchill decided to have SPM put on an outdoors concert at Pompositticut Farm in Hudson.

"It was kind of testing the waters," Churchill said.

The concert went well, and "gave us the confidence to start in on a full season," Churchill said.

However, SPM decided not to announce a regular four-concert subscription season right away. Instead the orchestra announced the November performances in Hudson and Worcester.

Hudson has been SPM's home from the beginning, and over the years the orchestra has also performed in Leominster and Westborough. More recently, it has performed a given concert Saturday in Hudson and then Sunday in St. Mark's School in Southborough.

At the time of speaking, Churchill said St. Mark's School had not decided what its public access was going to be.

"We had to find another venue for the Sunday concert. Since we had Zlatomir Fung, a brilliant, brilliant soloist, who has played with us four times before, we thought, well, let's stretch and rent Mechanics Hall and present ourselves there," Churchill said.

"The orchestra loves to play In Mechanics Hall," he noted. However, SPM's performances there have almost always been part of a vocal or choral program, whether with the former Salisbury Lyric Opera Company from years ago, or in 2019, when it was the orchestra for the Beatles tribute band Classical Mystery Tour.

"We've never played a standard subscription type concert in Mechanics Hall. This is the first time we'll do that," Churchill said. SPM also plans to perform in Mechanics Hall March 20.

SPM started rehearsing for "Return To Live Performance!" at Hudson High School in early September. The orchestra numbers 72 musicians. "We had a couple retire but everyone who was around and capable of playing is playing, and there are a couple of new players."

Walton's "Crown Imperial" is "really celebratory. It's getting the cobwebs out," Churchill said of opening next weekend's concert.

Besides being one of the area’s preeminent classical music orchestras, SPM has earned a reputation over the years for featuring fresh, talented young faces to perform in its concerts.

In 2019, Fung won First Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition Cello Division in Russia. He was the first American in four decades and at 20, the youngest musician ever to win.

Earlier this year a recital he recorded at the BrickBox Theater at the JMAC, 20 Franklin St., Worcester, was broadcast online in partnership by Music Worcester and The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

"There is no question that Zlatomir is a truly one of the outstanding string soloists of his generation," Churchill said. "One of SPM’s missions is to support gifted young musical artists destined for notable careers, and it has been our privilege to present Zlatomir, a Westborough native, from age 11. These concerts will mark his fifth appearance with SPM."

Elgar’s Cello Concerto, written just after the horrors of World War I and with the knowledge that his wife was very ill, can be interpreted in a number of ways, from contemplative to almost tragically heartfelt.

The SPM concert will be Fung's first public performances of the work, Churchill said, so it may be an ongoing learning experience.

"He'll be touring with it in Russia in June. We're not as sophisticated as a major orchestra but we have a lot of heart and the result is very positive in its way. It's a chance for a low pressure way to perform the work with an orchestra. I'm an educator, I love doing that. You can imagine how satisfying that is."

William L. Dawson's “Negro Folk Symphony” received immediate acclaim at its world premiere on Nov. 20, 1934, at Carnegie Hall in New York City when the work was conducted by Leopold Stokowski and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

As a Black composer, Dawson intended to celebrate the folk tunes of Black Americans in symphonic form. As Dawson put it, he wanted to racially code his symphony as, “unmistakably not the work of a white man." In his program notes, distributed at the first performance, the composer incorporated melodies, “over which he has brooded since childhood, having learned them at his mother’s knee.”

In the years following, however, "Negro Folk Symphony" and the works of other Black composers who had been flourishing during a period in the 1930s and '40s fell out of practice, Churchill noted.

"In this climate we're all seeking to broaden the repertoire to be much more inclusive," Churchill said of the current cultural mood.

"It's a brilliant, beautifully constructed piece. There's pain, yet incredible hope for the future. It's extremely timely for this moment. So I'm excited about that."

SPM is now getting poised to announce the rest of its season. The current plan would be:

7:30 p.m. Jan. 29 at Hudson High School, and 3:30 p.m. Jan. 30 at St. Mark's School. Lily Boulanger, D'un matin de printemps; Bartok, Piano Concerto No. 3., with Benjamin Hochman, soloist; and Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6 "Pathetique."

7:30 p.m. March 19 at Hudson High School, and 3:30 p.m. March 20 in Mechanics Hall, Worcester. Mendelssohn, Hebrides Overture; Thea Musgrave, Turbulent Landscapes; and Dvorak, Violin Concerto, with Inmo Yang, soloist.

7:30 p.m. May 14 in Hudson High School, and 3:30 p.m. May 15 in Shattuck Arts Center at St. Mark's School. Brahms, Academic Festival Overture; Ernest Chausson, Poème, with Julia Churchill, violin soloist; Darius Milhaud, Cello Concerto No. 1, with Emma Churchill, cello soloist; and Beethoven, Symphony No. 8 in F Major.

Julia and Emma are Churchill's twin daughters.

The schedule is subject to confirmation.

"We're dipping our toe into Worcester in a different way. We'll see how the two concerts go," Churchill said of the Nov. 14 and March 20 concert dates.

"We're definitely based in Hudson. We are fortunate to be presented by St. Mark's, but venturing into Worcester in the future is definitely something we'd love to consider," Churchill said.

"I'm really excited what's been happening. I'm hoping people will show up. Who knows, with all the protocols. There are these challenges. But I would much rather be doing it with the challenges than not."

"Return To Live Performance!" 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13, Hudson High School, Hudson. $25 adult, $20 seniors (65+), students free.

"Return To Live Performance!" 3:30 p.m. Nov. 14, Mechanics Hall, 321 Main St., Worcester. $30 adult, $25 seniors (65+), students free.

www.symphonypromusica.org

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Symphony Pro Musica ready for return to live performance in Hudson and Worcester