Tuscaloosa Symphony concert will bring spare, atmospheric sounds to church

Autumn is not simply the underfoot crunch of bronzed, gilded, roseate leaves on a trek toward bleak midwinter. Extending between the blatant fires of summer and Grace Paley's bare birches "tattered, tired of sustaining delicacy," it's also a celebration of harvests, bracing and preparing for darker nights ahead.

As the poem "L'Autunno," released to accompany Antonio Vivaldi's "Autumn" section of his "Four Seasons" reminds, it's enjoying the fruits of harvests, consuming "full of Bacchus' liquor:" "The mild air gives pleasure, and the season invites many to enjoy a sweet slumber." Intentionally or not, Vivaldi projected the idyllic pleasures of the soothing post-Thanksgiving snooze.

Though poets commit entire thesauruses trying to pin down the season, one word for fall, and music chosen for the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra's "Autumn Leaves" could be "melancholy:" pensive with a pervasive sadness, but not beyond hope or joy. Much like the blues, it's music that lifts from and overcomes, rather than wallows within.

Monday's concert will begin with Virgil Thomson's "Autumn," a concertina for harp, percussion and strings, with Abigail Workman and Katherine Hoppe McQueen on harp. TSO music director Adam Flatt will conduct; acting concertmaster for the evening will be Levon Margaryan.

Thomson was seen as a product of his Midwestern upbringing, in Kansas City, Missouri, scoring atmospheric music that can suggest the wide-open spaces also explored by his contemporary, and sometime rival, Aaron Copland. Thomson composed a number of scores for film, so as with other classical composers of the 20th century, certain of his works may have been heard more often than recognized, as accompanying music.

"His work has these American soundscapes, music from the heartland," said Natassia Perrine, executive director of the TSO. That pairs well with the following work, "Two Gymnopedies" by Erik Satie, as orchestrated by Claude Debussy, in more modern minimalist, spacious sounds. Thomson focused his early studies on the work of Satie.

"It may be out there for some, esoteric, but it evokes the season," Perrine said. "(Thomson and Satie) are pretty modern, when you compare with Haydn and Vivaldi," whose works close the "Autumn Leaves" concert.

"Satie was kind of a punk rocker of his time .... He proved you can have a symphonic sound that is spacious and open, and doesn't have to be heavy," she said.

Debussy orchestrated Satie's "Gymnopedies" — from an ancient Spartan festival where men either danced naked, or unarmed, depending on translation — when the former composer's star was rising, while the punk rocker's fell.

"(Satie's) colleagues were quoted calling him a charlatan because he was doing these kind of wild things," Perrine said. "He really wanted to get rid of the pretentiousness of classical music."

The "Two Gymnopedies" were three initially, all piano pieces. Debussy took out the second, swapped the third for the first, and arranged them for a small chamber.

"A lot of music historians name it as the precursor to ambient music," Perrine said. Whether audiences recognize the title or composer, at least one lilting, haunting melody line — from what was originally the first of the three, but will be played last Monday, following Debussy's re-arrangement — of the pieces will be familiar from its evocative use of wistful, melancholy states of mind in film, from Wes Anderson's "The Royal Tennenbaums" to Woody Allen's "Another Woman" to Louis Malle's "My Dinner With Andre," and extensively also on TV, in series including "How I Met Your Mother," "Altered Carbon" to "Killing Eve" to "The Queen's Gambit."

It's also been heard in videogames, and sampled by pop musicians from Gary Numan to Blood, Sweat and Tears to Janet Jackson, in her 2001 single "Someone to Call My Lover," where Satie's line rides atop a looped sample of the guitar riff from America's "Ventura Highway."

Changeable moods seem apt for the symphony's annual chamber concert, held not in its usual home, the 1,000-seat Moody Concert Hall on the University of Alabama campus, but in the more intimate environs of downtown Tuscaloosa's First Presbyterian Church at 900 Greensboro Ave., where capacity is 500. Patrons should note that seating is open, not assigned, so arriving early for the 7 p.m. Monday performance is recommended.

Monday's repertoire is more generally concise and spare than in full orchestral glory, accented by the crisp flare of bracing cool, hinting at winter-defying celebrations to come. In the TSO's case, that to-come would be the just-around-the-corner Dec. 12 "Home for the Holidays" concert, also featuring the Prentice Concert Chorale, Shelton State Singers and Alabama Choir School. Tickets for that one always go fast, and sell out, so Perrine suggests early purchase.

Monday's concert follows the contemporary Americans with two more traditional composers, in Vivaldi's "Oboe Concerto in A minor, RV 461," featuring Mary Lindsey Bailey on oboe, and Haydn's "Symphony No. 31, 'Hornsignal'."

As music director for a girl's orphanage in Vienna, Vivaldi wrote for many different instruments, essentially to keep the girls "... from getting up to no good," Bailey said in a video created by Perrine for a series of TSO artist spotlights. They and others are available on YouTube, as part of the educational series Music with Ms. P.

The reason Bailey likes this piece: "...I feel like it really resonates well with the natural sounds of the oboe .... It covers a fairly wide range of technical challenges and lyrical expression, gives the audience a chance to really get to know what the oboe can do, as well as some of the fireworks behind the concerto nature."

Likewise, the TSO's David Bradley discussed on video the unusual four-horn arrangement of the Haydn.

"Having four horns provides quite a lot of sound, a lot of resonance, a lot of reverberation in the hall that they would have played in back in Vienna," he said, noting the closing Monday night piece features fanfares, triumphant-sounding stretches, and a lot of themes and variations in alternating melodies, especially in the fourth movement, "... toggling between cello, flute, oboe, French horn and the concertmaster," on violin.

Also Monday night, the TSO will begin offering mini-packages, including the three spring 2023 concerts for either $100 per person, or $150 per pair. Premium seats at Moody performances go for $40, with others at $30. All students are admitted free to TSO concerts. Patrons should call between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. weekdays, at 205-752-5515, or visit the website at www.tsoonline.org.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Tuscaloosa Symphony to perform works by Vivaldi, more at local church