SymphonyNotes

You may not know this, but Lexington Symphony’s program notes are written by second violinist Cindy Fong. Cindy is a playing member of the orchestra, which she joined in 1996. A double-major in music and English at Stanford University, she is now making use of both as a professor of  Piano and English as a Second Language at Bunker Hill Community College. Her other violin activities include regular participation in the Manhattan String Quartet’s workshops abroad and an occasional orchestral gig.  She also continues to be active as a pianist and has performed in piano chamber music concerts in the New England area and as orchestral pianist for the Longwood, Newton, and Brockton Symphonies.

And, most importantly for our purposes today, she has been writing the program notes for Lexington Symphony since 2007. We asked Cindy to talk a little bit about her experience with writing these notes…and we got her to share a sneak peek at the program notes for our March 24 concert!

LS:  Can you describe your writing process?

CF: The preparation part has developed over the years – now it usually involves collecting as many notes on-line as I can and then also reading a few relevant chapters in one or (preferably) two books, when I can find books.  Sometimes, I detour into ancillary research, too, like reading the short Wikipedia bio on Oluf Hartmann, the artist for whom Nielsen’s “Artist’s Bier” was written. When I’ve finally reached a critical mass of information – it’s like dating a composer for a few weeks, until I have a sense of him (Brahms was basically my  “boyfriend”for several weeks the summer I wrote up his First Symphony) — I listen to the piece a couple of times.  Sometimes I have to listen MORE than a couple times, all while reading descriptions of the work, to have a
real understanding of it. I’ll also come up with my own reactions while listening, like the touches of Gershwin I detected in the Nielsen clarinet concerto, which was not mentioned in anything I read.

Then comes the writing part, at LONG last, usually after at least one or two weeks of gathering info.  I almost always fear I don’t have anymore notes in me (thus relating a little to the writer’s block some composers experience), and always start with a Brainstorm page where, to loosen up, I just type random things about the piece until suddenly, I find a starting line (whew!). Sometimes, it takes a long time to find it, while other times, I have the shadow of it in my head even before starting (it sometimes comes to me during laps at the pool), which always makes life easier.  When I finally get the first paragraph out, I relax and can start to enjoy the whole writing process.

Along the way, I’m always wondering how I’ll end the thing.  I’ve been lucky many times, though, that a cool final line somehow ju

st comes to me almost automatically. But I never stop worrying that that may be the last cool ending line that will ever come my way.  And then, even after the last sentence is written, I usually let the thing sit around for a week (often on my dining room table), just to “age” a bit and allow for some compulsive tweaking.

LS: What do you enjoy about writing the notes?

Cindy: I enjoy the challenge of putting a lot of disparate information together into a coherent tale.  (Sometimes, it feels like things go into ahopper and then just come out, all put together.)  I enjoy adding my personal spin on a piece (as long as it seems accurate). Sometimes, I can’t resist being droll, too, which is fun. And I feel that knowing more about each piece we’re playing gives me an edge in playing even my lowly second violin parts.

And I love doing notes for a group like the Lexington Symphony, which is truly a unique group, full of excellent, precise musicians who care about music-making (and not just check-collecting).  It’s like contributing to a family effort in a family I’m proud to belong to. The players (oh, and Jonathan too) are also awesome people, which helps.

And now, a sneak peek at the program notes for March 24:

Perhaps not since that rock star Franz Joseph Haydn in the 1790s had a composer so captivated the London public like Antonín Dvořák, the shy, stocky butcher’s son with the endearingly fractured English, whose impressive Symphony No. 6 in D, Slavonic Dances, and, especially, Stabat Mater – one of the first modern Czech oratorios – had led to his first visit in the spring of 1884. Arriving in London on March 8 as an honored guest of the Philharmonic Society, the 42-year-old composer would spend the next two and a half weeks conducting three concerts of his own music. “I cannot tell you how great is the honour and respect the English people here show me,” he exulted in a letter to his father. “Everywhere they write and talk about me and say that I am the lion of this year’s musical season in London!”

It was a welcome shift to international stature for Dvořák, who, after spending eleven years as a violist in Prague’s National Theater Orchestra, plus three more as a church organist, had finally won enough attention – largely through his bona fide hit, the Slavonic Dances — to retire such positions for the life of full-time composer. Stuffed with banquets, trailed by autograph-seeking fans, he returned home from that first trip to London with, unsurprisingly, several new projects in hand, including a promise to write a new symphony for the Philharmonic Society.

This work, which would become tonight’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, was one that had actually preoccupied Dvořák since the fall of 1883, when his friend and distinguished supporter, Johannes Brahms, played through bits of his own new Symphony No. 3 in F for him in Vienna; a few months later Dvorak would hear the work in Berlin, with Brahms himself conducting. Brahms’ work nagged at Dvořák: could he ever reach such stratospheric heights himself? After finally setting to work on his Philharmonic Society commission in December 1884, he soon wrote to a friend, “…wherever I go I think of nothing but my work, which must be capable of stirring the world….” Brahms himself was urging the younger composer to outdo himself, telling him, “I imagine your symphony quite different from [the 6th symphony].” In three months, in a state of driven aspiration, Dvorak had completed his new symphony.

It was, in the end, quite different from his Symphony No. 6 in D…

To learn more about Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7, come hear the concert on March 24!