Last Sunday afternoon at the Falls Music Center, four campus ensembles concluded the fall term with a program that moved from playful charm to symphonic thunder. The concert featured chamber works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a prominent British mixed-race composer born in 1875, and a full performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which drew a packed audience and steady applause.
Dr. Derik Jacoby, the conductor of the Chamber and Symphony Orchestras, described his favorite moments from the performance, noting how the nature of Beethoven’s pieces required orchestra members to collaborate with one another.
“[Beethoven’s climatic moments] are large and bombastic and massive and they have every person in the group working together at the same time. But then also the way that Beethoven gets to these large moments over long periods of time, things are swirling and taking left turns and right turns and gradually building up, so he really effectively leads us to these large moments so everybody, every single person on stage is working together.” said Jacoby.
This particular program featured an example of carefully developed student leadership. In a rare occurrence for a regular term concert, a student took the podium for Coleridge-Taylor’s opening movement, drawing notice from audience members.
“For the first movement in the Samuel Coleridge Taylor, we have a student conductor conducting that movement, which is great. This is Annabell Wu, class of ’26. She’s been working on conducting for quite some time, and works hard at it. She is now to the point in her senior year where having her conduct a performance like this is sort of the next appropriate challenge,” said Jacoby.
Bruce Ru ’28, who played violin and authored the program notes, added onto Jacoby’s comments and emphasized what Wu’s leadership meant within the ensemble culture.
“My favorite part of the performance was the student conductor, Annabelle Wu ’26. She’s a formidable woman. She conducted a movement of the chamber orchestra. From my experience, conducting is more than just being a musician. It’s also about leadership and executive presence, and that is very important,” said Ru.
Jess Jeon ’27, concertmaster in the Symphony Orchestra and a violinist in the Chamber Orchestra, described the sharp musical contrast between the two halves of the program.
“I performed in the chamber orchestra and in the symphony orchestra. For Beethoven, it [has] a lot to do with Beethoven’s suffering, especially as he was suffering, because it was written when his hearing in his left ear had been out. It’s a very, very dark piece, but it’s also really nice because there are some really melodic parts that contrast with it,” said Jeon.
Dr. Elizabeth Aureden, who conducts the Amadeus ensemble, highlighted the concert’s breadth and the growth she saw from early fall to now. She emphasized the focus behind her group’s contemporary selections.
“Our group played two contemporary pieces, and I always loved starting the year as much as I could with composers who were still alive. We were really working on just creating our ensemble and looking together. Really listening to each other, to think about how to play beautifully, quietly together, and also, the fast rhythmic passages, just with lots of energy, and again, being connected with each other,” said Aureden.
The concert’s mood, performers said, came from the hours of preparation and the energy of a first-term showcase. Jacoby emphasized how the repertoire’s turns and surprises push players to listen, adapt, and celebrate together.
“There are plenty of left turns, and plenty of things that are deceptive in ways you wouldn’t quite expect. There is a surprise where in the third movement, when the main theme returns near the end, everybody, all the string players are plucking their instruments rather than bowing them … There is a part in the fourth movement where all of a sudden Beethoven time-warps back to the third movement and then time warps back to the fourth movement … Of course, the goal is to present the hard work that they all have done in the best light possible on that day in the performance,” said Jacoby.
