Nashua Chamber Orchestra opens season with full orchestra concerts
By Katelyn Sahagian
It’s been a long time coming, but the Nashua Chamber Orchestra is finally back to its full size, and it should stay that way for the rest of the season.
For the first time since the pandemic, the Nashua Chamber Orchestra is going to be holding its season with a complete orchestra. While the group finished off last season in the spring of 2022 with an orchestral concert, the majority of the season had been with small string groups, says orchestra director David Feltner.
“I’m so happy to be back to a full orchestra and live concerts after the hiatus that most of the arts groups had to take,” Feltner said.
Feltner said he wanted the first concert of the full orchestra season to be something extremely special. The concert, titled “Beethoven and Friends,” will feature a selection of pieces from composers from Beethoven’s time or with styles that complement his own. The symphony for the show is Beethoven’s Eighth.
The music differs from other, more performed works of Beethoven in a few distinct ways, said Feltner. Primarily, the music is in a major key. This is a drastic change from the stormy and ominous-sounding music that Beethoven usually composed.
While Beethoven is played often by instrumentalists and orchestras, Feltner said it’s rare for the eighth to be played.
“His odd-number symphonies get played more often,” Feltner said. “It could be partially because of the key. Maybe people respond more to the intensity of the minor-key symphonies. Sometimes composers write pieces that aren’t great. That’s not the case with this one.”
Feltner added that the score is incredibly difficult and probably one of the hardest of Beethoven’s symphonies to perform. Because of that, he designs the concert programs around one piece of music.
Feltner said he chooses music that will complement the main piece, but will make sure the pieces aren’t too strenuous for the musicians when they have a challenging symphony to play later in the program. With Beethoven’s eighth being his main inspiration, Feltner added a dueling pianos piece that was adapted to include strings by Jean Sibelius and a bassoon solo by Carl Maria von Weber.
The opening piece of the concert might be a first for New Hampshire when it comes to classical music. The orchestra will play the first symphony of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, which Feltner believes has never been played in the Granite State.
Bologne is a little-known composer from the mid to late 1700s, said Feltner. The composer was born in the French colony of Guadeloupe to a white planter and an enslaved Black woman. As a child he was taken to study music in Paris, and at one point he was in consideration to become the next conductor at the Paris Opera, according to Gabriel Banat’s biography The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow. Bologne was not only a prolific composer and virtuoso, but he lived in Chaussee d’Antin for two and a half years at the same time as Wolfgang Mozart.
“[Bolonge] was a very influential and interesting person, and just now people are discovering his music,” Feltner said. “He was a very gifted violinist. … He has a connection to all the composers of the season. The orchestra he worked with was the one that commissioned Joseph Haydn to write his Paris Symphony.”
While this concert will focus primarily on Beethoven’s piece, Feltner hopes he can provide unique surprises at all the upcoming concerts in the season, as he did with Bologne in this concert. He said he’s excited to see people sitting in the audience and experiencing classical music the way it was written to be.
“Being in the space where the music is actually happening in real time,” said Feltner. “That’s my wish, that people get to enjoy it and make some new discoveries and have a wonderful evening out.”
Beethoven and Friends
When and Where: Saturday, Nov. 5, at 7:30 p.m. at Nashua Community College (505 Amherst St., Nashua), and Sunday, Nov. 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Milford Town Hall (1 Union Square, Milford)
Price: Tickets are $20 for adults; $15 for senior citizens ages 65 and older, military, and college students, and free for children ages 18 and younger.
Visit: nco-music.org
Featured photo: David Feltner, Nashua Chamber Orchestra director. Courtesy photo.
