The Duke Symphony Orchestra (DSO), one of the oldest music ensembles on campus, is breaking with tradition this year.
Each spring, the DSO features one student, faculty or community solo musician in a concerto performance. After a lengthy and competitive audition process, the soloist can claim to be one of the most talented musicians in the Duke and Durham communities.
DSO Director Harry Davidson, who is also professor of the practice of music, said it was the right time to feature the talent within the orchestra during the regular performance season. During the DSO’s auditions last week, Davidson and his colleagues selected six violinists who will each perform one movement during the orchestra’s October 3 and December 5 concerts.
“I thought that rather than engage a soloist from outside the university or a faculty member, I would turn these fall concerti over to a student out of the members of the orchestra,” Davidson said. “Because I have such depth from within the violin section, I thought it would be entirely possible to have six deserving soloists this fall, giving an additional six students a chance to have the experience of playing a concerto with the symphony orchestra.”
The fall concerto soloists include seniors Niloy Ghosh, Jacqueline Sun and Sam Xi and juniors Kate Pearson and Wenjia Xu. Davidson expressed the utmost confidence in the violinists, especially after directing all six students for much of their Duke careers.
“I chose them personally based on what I know about them but also from their orchestra auditions last week,” Davidson said. “They are all also going to serve as concert-masters or associate concert-masters of the orchestra this season. They all are technically competent players and evidence some of the highest levels of musicianship within the orchestra as a whole.”
After the general audition process for the DSO wrapped up late last week, Davidson said he studied each of the movements of Mozart’s concerti and matched the student soloists’ “musical ability and temperament to the musical demands of the movement.”
Senior Sam Xi, who was paired with the third movement of Mozart’s fourth concerto, said being a fall soloist will give him an opportunity to study a new piece of music while gaining experience as a featured performer within the symphony.
“I’m interested to see how this plays out because I don’t have a private teacher right now,” Xi said. “I’m going to have to study this one on my own. It’s worked out for me pretty well in the past and I’m hoping it will work just as well in this case.”
Junior Kate Pearson also acknowledged the challenges associated with being a featured solo performer, but said she is excited to rehearse a movement that fits her performance style.
“I was excited to be assigned this movement because slow, lyrical violin pieces are my biggest strength,” Pearson said. “I think that coordination between soloist and orchestra is a common difficulty, because everyone has a different idea of how a piece should be played.”
Davidson said his fledgling program will be an interesting way for DSO audiences to experience a young musician’s sound in the context of a lengthy full-orchestra piece.
“If I were an audience member, I would think it would be fascinating to hear the musical personalities of three different people within a single concerto,” Davidson said.
Pearson added that the concerti on the DSO’s fall lineup are a perfect introduction to the seemingly impenetrable world of classical music. She said classical music holds a different experience for each listener.
“Students should come to Symphony Orchestra concerts because I think it would change their minds about classical music,” Pearson said. “Many college students write it off as boring, but if they took the time to engage with classical music, they would discover that it can be happy, passionate, enraged, quirky and many other emotions that I can’t put into words.”
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