I have just returned from a trip to Sioux Falls, where I heard Delta David Gier lead the South Dakota Symphony in Mahler’s Symphony No. 3. As readers of this blog know, I regard the SDSO as an American cultural institution that must be studied and emulated.
When I arrived at my balcony seat I was addressed by a couple of young men sitting just in front of me. They had heard my pre-concert conversation with David Gier. They had driven for four and a half hours from the University of North Dakota to hear Mahler. One of them expressed regret that there was no Bruckner on the SDSO season.
Seated to my left was David Chin, who introduced himself as a conductor at Augustana University in Sioux Falls. He had just performed (with commentary) Bach’s cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden. I had already learned about this event from Gier, who was immensely impressed. Chin was seated with half a dozen students. How many more were in the hall? I asked. Countless, he said.
Earlier in the day, ten conducting students from South Dakota State turned up at the dress rehearsal. For the performance, 28 were bussed from their campus in Brookings, an hour away.
The audience (strikingly inter-generational) numbered 1,200, the orchestra and chorus 88 and 82, respectively. Sioux Falls has a population of 200,000.
Before the music began, Jennifer Teisinger, the orchestra’s executive director, saluted its retiring members. The first name was Shireen Ranschau, in the cello section. She had joined the SDSO 54 years ago. Teisinger told the audience something it already knew – that the concert celebrated Delta David Gier’s twentieth season as music director. He had been asked to pick whatever music he wished. Gier had already led the SDSO in a complete Mahler cycle. He decided to return to No. 3 – which is in six movements and lasts about 100 minutes.
Before launching the symphony, Gier shared with the audience a sentence or two for each movement. He said that Mahler had originally titled the slow finale “What Love Tells Me” – and that Mahler had in mind what the Greeks called agape – spiritual love. Then Gier (who is a devout Christian) quoted a superscription on Mahler’s draft: “Behold my wounds! Let not one soul be lost!”
Gier’s rapt performance of Mahler’s finale was something unforgettable. I recently had occasion to watch 26-year-old Klaus Makela conduct this music (on youtube) with his magnificent Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra in 2022. Makela’s reading is tremendous, enraptured by the ardor of youth. Gier’s performance was enraptured by the pathos of experience.
The string choir of the South Dakota Symphony is a marvel (would that the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra had such expressive violins). Everything sounds deeply felt. The section leaders are a multi-cultural quartet (Korean, Taiwanese, Polish, American) that in fact frequently performs as the Dakota String Quartet. The quartet regularly visits Native American reservations and works intensively with children there. So does the orchestra’s Dakota Wind Quintet. This is the SDSO’s signature Lakota Music Project, about which I have often written. It is one reason the orchestra’s musicians perform with self-evident pride.
The principal double bass, Mario Chiarello, also conducts the Lincoln High School orchestra – one of fourteen middle and high school orchestras in town. (There are in addition four South Dakota Symphony youth orchestras. Elementary schools offer string instruction beginning in grade four.) Chiarello’s Lincoln High orchestra has performed all nine Beethoven symphonies. For his retirement next year, he will conduct the finale of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony (with chorus).
David Gier’s performance of Mahler’s Third was live-streamed. But SDSO concerts are not archived on the web – the orchestra lacks the financial resources for that. Back in the 1990s, when I was running the Brooklyn Philharmonic, I was able to secure large grants from the Hearst, Knight, Mellon, and Rockefeller Foundations. Nowadays, not a single major American charitable foundation supports classical music. And yet the example of the South Dakota Symphony is vital. Right now.
To read my “American Scholar” article about the national significance of the South Dakota Symphony, including commentary by Alex Ross of “The New Yorker,” click here.
To hear my 50-minute NPR version of that article, click here.
To read my recent reflections on “ripeness” in musical interpretation, also in “The American Scholar,” click here.
To read about the abandonment of classical music by our nation’s leading philanthropic organizations, click here.
I won’t be there, but if you aren’t planning to go to Rattle’s Mahler 6 in New York on Thursday, cancel whatever you’re doing to go. I don’t know how you feel about Rattle, but I heard Rattle do it with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2016, it is a performance that I hold so sacred in my memory that I worry about experiencing it again.
This reminds me we hosted a Mahler 2, ‘Resurrection’ symphony down here at the war Memorial in Trenton, NJ. It was conducted by Neeme Jarvi. I think it was 2007 and it was just a half mile walk from my house! I had previously heard it with Abbado and the BPO at Carnegie Hall, which was a more refined. But this was so memorable because it was so unlikely a location. The performers were about the same in number as the audience. I still remember some details and it’s about seventeen years ago. We just walked home through the park and it felt like Trenton was somehow Vienna a century ago. The spell music casts is a profound one.
Joe,
I was born in Sioux Falls in 1944 and have been going back on a regular basis to work on a long term history project exploring the lesser-known ethnic communities in South Dakota (Greeks, Jews, Italians, Syrians, African Americans etc. The time period is from the 1890’s into the 1960’s. The research is contextual in that it explores the growth and development of these communities in the larger social, political, economic, religious, and cultural context of the state. With regards to the cultural context, jazz was the music of the ballrooms and pavilions throughout the state 1919-1939 (Deadwood was a hotbed for jazz — something you would not learn from Ken Burns) and the classical music was the “high brow” music of choice (the music of Wagner was performed in the First Baptist Church and Sioux Falls College, also Baptist, established a symphony orchestra 1n 1928 (Vern Alger was the director and he had studied conducting under Karl Hohlman, assistant conductor of the Philharmonic orchestra in Berlin. In 1919, Jascha Heifetz performed as the Coliseum in Sioux Falls (it had seating for 3,000). In 1933, Ethel Waters appeared at the Coliseum with the original New York cast of 100 singers and dancers….
I have much more information on the cultural life of South Dakota in general and Sioux Falls in particular — including the history of the first symphony orchestra in Sioux Falls organized in the early 20’s and had an 8 concert season ( a fact which really surprised Delta David Gier). If you are interested, I could provide you with more information on this history (and also suggest some reasons why Minneapolis (an Minnesota more general as such a rich classical music tradition .. note, my wife was a member of the St. Marks Cathedral Choir here in Minneapolis and Sir David Willcocks of King’s College would come here for 5 or 6 years I believe to conduct a week long retreat with the choir. Again, if you are interest, I could provide you with more info. Let me known Stephen
Interesting article . However, I take exception to your claim about the Met orchestra violins allegedly “lacking expressiveness “. . I have’t heard the South Dakota symphony play yet but would certainly like to .. But the Met orchestra remains one of the world’s foremost orchestras , whether in operatic or orchestral repertoire ..
So many of the most interesting orchestras are essentially anonymous, known to only a handful. My hometown orchestra (Quad City Symphony) is one such orchestra. Growing, the QCSO was a formative influence on my own listening habits. I still try to get back to hear at least one or two concerts a year. Every concert is developed with care. There are familiar works, but MD Mark Russell Smith doesn’t hesitate to expose audiences to something new. Case in point: next year the orchestra is performing a concert version of Michael Abels’ Omar’s Journey. When they do perform a Mahler symphony the concerts are events – as they should be.
Such an illuminative note around the value of experience and ‘ripeness.’ I wonder if another issue for large, ‘tier 1’ orchestras is the overwhelming value placed on the one-dimensional audition process for hiring musicians. With so much competition facing young instrumentalists, does the brutal and torturous audition process as a sole determinant for hiring ignore the tremendous value of creating an ensemble of musicians who understand and contribute to musical collaboration? Who value and contribute to the music-making process with respect and joy? Is that part of what takes shape in an ensemble based in communities who embody some of those shared collaborative values (like the South Dakota Symphony)? And does the need to appeal to new, younger audiences contribute to that myopic view of hiring both instrumentalists and music directors? Am I overly naive in wondering if the audition process could/should also include discussion around how a prospective player is likely to contribute authentically and collaboratively to the ensemble community spirit (recognizing that that will surely shape the quality of the performed musical output and the community engagement)?