Local conductor Yariv Aloni scoffs at the idea of calling a composer “dead.” After all, their music is alive, he says. As the musical director of the Victoria Chamber Orchestra (VCO), he will be conducting what he calls “timeless music” here in town on February 17, when he brings Beethoven’s music to locals.
“It never gets old,” he says about Beethoven’s work. “No matter how old it is and how many times you’ve played it, it’s as if it were written yesterday; it’s always fresh. The music is incredibly alive and to hear it live, it’s something irreplaceable; it’s bigger than life, bigger than anything. For us, the players, to be able to be in it and produce the sound is the most thrilling thing.”
This is Aloni’s 23rd year conducting the VCO; at this event he will be conducting what he says are two very different symphonies. Aloni says the iconic fifth symphony is relentless and one of the hardest symphonies to conduct, since the instruments are playing all together for nearly the entire piece; he says the second symphony has a bit of a rebellious side to it.
“[It’s Beethoven] kind of testing the water,” says Aloni, “seeing how much interruption and a rebel he can be.”
The choice to take on Beethoven’s symphonies happened almost by fluke, says Aloni. The VCO had already done a few of the German composer’s works and unanimously decided to keep going.
“I felt there was such a feeling in the orchestra of achievement,” he says, “and I said, ‘I think I want more.’”
It’s easy to think that people would become bored playing the same artist’s music over and over again, but Aloni says that’s not the case.
“It’s the humanity of his voice, the sheer humanity in all aspects,” he says. “It’s incredibly complex, and simple. The feelings are so profound. You have all the emotions like you have in any great music, but it’s on such a profound level. With Beethoven, you have hundreds and hundreds of pages of revisions and notes and ideas and crossovers and sometimes an incredibly violent way of erasing something without even erasing it. You can feel the struggle of how to make it the best, and of course his own life struggle of not being able to hear, so the results are unbelievable.”
When it comes to those results, the task for Aloni isn’t so much about creating what he wants to hear as it is about guiding the orchestra through the piece.
“It’s thrilling when the orchestra really comes together, but it’s not so much what I want,” he says. “If I’m able to help them bring the best out of themselves, they don’t really play for me, they play together. I’m there to help them do that and to inspire them and to focus them. I just help them achieve it, so it’s really their achievement, which is the real celebration.”
Beethoven’s 2nd Symphony in D and 5th Symphony in C Minor
8 pm Friday, February 17
$15 for students (free for music students)
First Metropolitan United Church (932 Balmoral)
victoriachamberorchestra.org
A good article. I think that conductor Aloni is able to get us, his orchestra players, to play together at a level better than we can actually usually achieve alone. So it may be our achievement as he says but he makes it happen.