Spins and Dance

The University Orchestra Performs Rossini, Adams, and Shostakovich

Performers

Orchestra of the College of Music of Freiburg
, Scott Sandmeier, Conductor

Program

Gioachino Rossini Overture to the opera “William Tell”
John Adams The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra)
Dmitri Shostakovich Waltz No. 2 from the Suite for Variety Orchestra, Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54

The program spans a wide musical spectrum, ranging from Gioachino Rossini’s stirring overture to “William Tell” to John Adams’ “The Chairman Dances,” a foxtrot for orchestra, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s famous Waltz No. 2, all the way to his Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54, which forms the centerpiece of the program.

The composer publicly described the work, composed in 1939, as evoking thoughts of spring, joy, and youth, even though the listening experience is quite different. Sandmeier describes the effect of the music, noting that the extended first movement is “contemplative, sad, perhaps tragic.” This is followed by an almost diabolical scherzo and a “downright crazy finale.” At first, one doesn’t understand at all why these three movements were brought together as an artistic unit. For more than two decades, Scott Sandmeier has been exploring the question of what lies behind this music. Given the time in which it was composed, he does not wish to offer a definitive answer. Yet it is precisely this openness that makes the Sixth Symphony, for him, a work “that even young musicians can grapple with.”

John Adams evokes an entirely different kind of dance in “The Chairman Dances.” The “Foxtrot for Orchestra” was composed within the musical context of his opera “Nixon in China,” which takes Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China as its starting point. The piece depicts an imaginary scene in which Mao steps out of his portrait to dance with his wife. Repetitive structures meet a finely crafted sound palette—until, at the end, the percussion parts produce the sound of an old record slowly fading out. Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2, which owes much of its popularity not least to Stanley Kubrick’s film “Eyes Wide Shut,” lends a sense of lightness. “The waltz just sticks in your head,” says Sandmeier.

When selecting the works, the focus was initially not on an overarching theme, but on musical training. For Sandmeier, working in a large orchestra is an essential part of that: “We don’t train instrumentalists; we train musicians,” he emphasizes. Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture, for example, is part of the orchestral repertoire and contains passages that students might encounter during auditions. The decision to omit soloists was also a conscious choice: “We wanted a program for the orchestra alone.” It was only from this selection that the dramaturgy of “Wirbel und Tanz” developed.