Inside a New Century rehearsal

May 5, 12:05 PMSF Classical Music ExaminerScott Foglesong

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After lunchtime on a weekday in early March, in a San Francisco church: I was privileged to attend a rehearsal of the New Century Chamber Orchestra, as they prepared a concert featuring piano soloist Anne-Marie McDermott playing Shostakovich and Prokofiev, together with Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence.

New Century Chamber Orchestra, at Herbst Theater
Photo: Jim Block

The NCCO is a conductorless orchestra, meaning that it lacks the usual baton-wielding hotshot on the podium. That doesn't quite mean that the NCCO is leaderless, however. Pure democracy isn't always viable for musical ensembles -- somebody has to give downbeats, establish tempi, follow the soloist, and so forth.

In the NCCO, that role is played by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, the orchestra's new music director since the beginning of this current concert season. Nadja is a front-ranking virtuoso violinist with substantial professional achievements; leading a conductorless orchestra represented a new path for her, but one which she has embraced with gusto. I interviewed her as part of an article describing the forthcoming season, in fact.

Hearing the NCCO in the boomy confines of a church provided a revelation for me; I generally hear them in the tissue-dry acoustic of San Francisco's Herbst Theater, where they sound crisp and clean but not particularly luxurious. In the rehearsal venue, the New Century had all of the gut-wrenching presence of the Vienna Philharmonic up close -- lotsa sound flying up to that peaked ceiling, bouncing hither and yon, echoing and reverberating. I'm one of those types who really love reverberant spaces, so I was having myself a ball.

That the NCCO is a different kettle of fish is exemplified by Anne-Marie McDermott's adorable little dog, who was putzing around the place, enjoying all of the attention from a roomful of admirers. (Somehow I can't quite imagine fluffy little dogs at a Vienna Phil rehearsal.) The atmosphere is friendly, comfortable, downright schmoozy. But once Nadja was ready to begin (after downing a late-lunch pastrami sandwich; this is one busy lady) the group was ready with her.

After introducing soloist McDermott and trumpeter Adam Luftman (who played in the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1), they settled down to work. I was amused to see McDermott and Luftman quickly practice over the opening statement (trumpet and piano solo) and then quip "OK, we're done!" to the group.

In a concerto the soloist must communicate with the orchestra; typically that would be handled via a conductor, but in the case of this concert Nadja was watching Anne-Marie carefully and following her. Right away I noticed that the orchestra picked up the tempo change near the beginning of the first movement easily and stayed firmly with her. In fact, given that the rehearsal I was hearing was the group's first time through with the soloist, I was quite taken with its cohesion -- previous rehearsals without piano had obviously prepared them well.

At this point, I mentally chided myself for having neglected to bring my copy of the score; thoroughly dog-eared and messy, it dates back to my teenage years when I studied the piece with my teacher Dorothea Seamann, on the faculty of the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver. Ms. Seamann accepted only the occasional pre-college student; in fact, she had only one other, a remarkably poised young lady who took her lesson immediately before mine and who was working on the Mozart D-minor concerto at the same time I was thrashing my way through the Shostakovich. Her name was Condoleezza Rice.

Nadja and Condoleezza: connected, albeit quite vaguely, through me
Photo of Salerno-Sonnenberg by Jim Block

But I digress; back to the rehearsal. Nadja and Anne-Marie determined that the overall tempo should be a bit faster, and for a few minutes, Nadja went ahead and actually conducted the orchestra in order to establish that faster tempo. Otherwise, she continued to lead with her bow and head as necessary.

The orchestra members are always welcome to chip in with their ideas or requests. The authority moves around the group; everybody has a say, whether first chair or last. Trumpeter Adam Luftman was welcome to add his two cents to the dialogue as well. The leader (Nadja) acts as a kind of traffic cop in such situations, ensuring that the discussion doesn't degenerate into a free-for-all and that the precious, limited rehearsal time is not wasted.

Which means that Nadja would assert her leadership on occasion, typically limited to no more than a quick "SSSHHH!!" when the talk levels blossomed overly. She is an energetic, dynamic leader and helps to ensure that the group plays at maximum potential. It seemed clear enough to me that the relationship between music director and orchestra is solid and comfortable.

That reminds me that the NCCO works under a chamber-group dynamic, and in such situations toxic or overbearing personalities can well have a devastatingly negative impact. I've worked with some arrogant bullies who intimidated the others into submission. I have vivid and unpleasant memories of a situation in which two such personalities locked horns during a rehearsal; the rest of us just sat there, appalled by the nasty confrontation spiraling out of control before us. No resolution being possible, apparently, we stumbled through somehow to a thoroughly unsatisfactory concert. Needless to say, those two characters never played together in a group again.

Toxic personalities would do poorly in the New Century's cooperative atmosphere and wouldn't last long -- if, in fact, such players made it through the audition process in the first place. Even at times when the rehearsal was moving in several directions at once -- such as the strings discussing a particular passage while McDermott and Luftman conferred -- the mood was professional and the results sought through discussion and agreement.

Mistakes happen in rehearsal and the opening of the slow movement saw some problems with the string pizzicati. But this wasn't the NBC Symphony cringing under a screaming Toscanini; they went back over it and fixed the problem, pleasantly and easily. I also noticed here that the individual sections of the orchestra -- cellos to first violins, violas to cellos, etc -- are quite good at communicating with each other. Everybody listens.

Sometimes problems arose that would have been much easier to solve with a conductor, or at least could have been handled more quickly. However, the orchestra worked through such passages and resolved the issues to everybody's satisafaction.

In the limited time remaining for the afternoon's rehearsal, the group chose to do a quick run through the piano-and-orchestra version of the Prokofiev Visions fugitives, focusing only on those movements involving piano and orchestra together.

The rain fell on the roof and Anne-Marie's little fluffy dog barked madly at the noise; it all got done. A few days later I heard the concert at the Herbst Theater; they did the music up proud, this time sans frou-frou dog obbligato.

The New Century Chamber Orchestra's final program, "Shadows and Light", approaches May 14 - 19. You may access some information about that concert here via the NCCO website.