For featured violinist Alex Styk ’14, Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra’s Saturday evening concert will be a musical marathon. After a year of practice, he will solo in a 35 minute-long piece that involves lyrical syncopation and closes with a finger-numbing finale.
Each type of music present in the piece pulls it in different directions, Styk said, interjecting new ideas, themes and emotions. Capturing these variations requires intense focus.
“You have to switch hats to move through all of the different emotions,” he said. “Making all of the different gestures convincing is challenging.”
The full show includes three difficult pieces from Russian orchestral tradition: Igor Stravinsky’s Suite from “The Firebird,” Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” orchestrated by Maurice Ravel, and Pytor Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto in D Major Op. 35,” featuring Styk as soloist.
The pieces require more instruments than those present in the current orchestra, so the group has hired professional players to fill in for the show. The group is currently short on wind instruments in particular, violinist Kristy Fan ’17 said.
“The week before the concert is so important because the hired players come in, and it gives us the true context of how each piece is supposed to sound,” Fan said. “In that one week we have to work out everything and double our rehearsal time.”
Making the pieces flow cohesively has posed a challenge as musicians have had to hone their individual playing and coordinate among the larger group, violinist Robert Herbst ’16 said.
“It has been an exercise in playing in a group because each individual piece is hard, but that is compounded when you have to make it fit in with everyone’s parts,” he said.
The group typically practices twice a week for two-hour sessions, but the final week of rehearsals included about eight additional hours of playing. Members also practice their parts on their own, clarinetist Josh Warzecha ’17 said.
Princiotti called the repertoire an “endorphin extravaganza” with “sheer sonic and visceral appeal.”
The group could only master each piece through hard work and dedication, Fan said, since the pieces are not typically played by college orchestras.
Styk said the solo will be a great culminating experience to his musical career at Dartmouth.
“[Tchaikovsky] is by far my favorite violin concerto,” he said. “I wanted to take it on as a challenge and also as a treat to learn.”
