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No longer hidin': Steven Fisher, a violist and Joseph Haydn scholar, discovered a previously unknown symphony while researching the composer's work.
Kevin Bartram will conduct the University of Mary Washington-Community Symphony Orchestra tomorrow night.
Keeping score: Haydn is heavenly, as is the magic of Mozart. |
By JENNIFER STROBEL
KEVIN BARTRAM was scanning his e-mail inbox one day when he came across a message that got right to the point. It read: "My name is Steven Fisher. My viola and I are coming to Fredericksburg, and I want to play in your orchestra."
As conductor of the UMW-Community Symphony Orchestra, Bartram gets occasional inquiries from musicians. Most come from violinists. So a rare note from a violist--and one so seemingly confident--got his attention.
Steven Fisher soon played his viola for Bartram, and was offered his seat with the orchestra, which was rehearsing Joseph Haydn's 104th Symphony.
Fisher had mentioned he was "somewhat" of a Haydn scholar; Bartram had replied politely, saying something to the effect of "OK, fine, that's interesting."
Then, during a break at the first rehearsal, this "somewhat of a Haydn scholar" approached Bartram to suggest a tempo adjustment in the Haydn symphony.
"You just don't do that to a conductor unless you have something to back it up," Bartram recalled later in an interview.
Still skeptical, Bartram next invited this upstart new violist to talk with the orchestra about Haydn. That's when Fisher mentioned very matter-of-factly that he'd discovered a previously unknown Haydn symphony.
Bartram did a double-take: "Excuse me? What did you say?"
According to Bartram, his new musician was a quiet gentleman, not the self-congratulatory type. It took yet another conversation to learn that Fisher is, indeed, one of the world's experts on the music of Joseph Haydn, a classical-era composer whose fame has had staying power through more than three centuries.
Concert-goers have enjoyed Haydn works many times over, but they have never heard the unpublished symphony the UMW-Community Orchestra will perform Friday at its season opening concert.
The single known copy of the piece had been shelved for decades at the Library of Congress, which acquired it as part of a collection in 1909, the centennial year of Haydn's death.
It was Fisher who first noticed the unfamiliar symphony amidst other known Haydn works when he was doing doctoral research in 1976.
Then the detective work began, as Fisher labored to authenticate that the symphony was indeed Haydn's. He traced it to Spain, where an 18th-century scribe copied the manuscript from Haydn's original, now vanished.
Lucky for Haydn aficionados, someone hung onto the copy. Where it was all those years is not clear, though it's possible it was just packed in a trunk and passed through generations of Spanish aristocracy until the Library of Congress purchase.
Fisher, who earned his doctorate in history and theory of music from the University of Pennsylvania, performed the work with the university chamber orchestra in 1987. He will again play viola when the UMW-Community Symphony Orchestra performs it.
Professionally, Fisher shares his passion for Haydn and other classical composers as a writer, editor and lecturer. Among other projects, he is working on a new edition of the complete Haydn works, including the once-lost symphony.
A Norfolk native, he moved in 2008 from Cambridge, Mass., to southern Stafford County to be closer to family, friends and the city of Washington.
"Some amazing things just fall into place," Bartram said in anticipation of his orchestra's upcoming concert.
The Haydn symphony was written in the middle of the composer's prolific career, around the time of his famous "Farewell Symphony," a work any music appreciation student hears.
A younger composer named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was already making his mark in the European music world as a child prodigy. By this time, he was 17, an admirer of the elder Haydn.
Along with the Haydn Symphony, the UMW-Community Orchestra will perform the teenage Mozart's work, "Concertone for Two Violins and Orchestra." That was written in 1773, the same year as the first two movements of Haydn's "lost" symphony.
In the second half of the program, concert-goers will hear a rarely performed version of Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition."
This masterworks concert is the 2009-2010 season kickoff for the orchestra, which consists of both university students and community residents.
Subsequent programs include a young people's concert for children ages 3 and older; the "Fiddlestix Instrument Petting Zoo," where orchestra members demonstrate their instruments; "Holiday POPS concert: Christmas Then and Now," with favorite carols and works from the Mannheim Steamroller series; "March Musical Mix Contemporary Music Festival," celebrating works by living composers; the "William M. Anderson Jr. Celebrity Series," featuring Lynda Carter--television's legendary "Wonder Woman"--who is now a musical performer of jazz, blues and country.
