“The bonding that happens between a conductor and an orchestra over time is quite intimate,” influential American conductor Jung-Ho Pak says. “Inviting a guest conductor in is a little like watching your wife dance with another man. It’s not an easy thing to turn your orchestra over to someone else.”
Nevertheless, when the Monterey Symphony returns this weekend for the fourth installment of their six-concert water-themed season, it won’t be under the baton of longtime conductor and artistic director Max Bragado-Darman. Stepping to the podium instead will be Pak.
The conductor has arranged exchanges with Bragado-Darman in the past. It was an invitation from Bragado-Darman for Pak to conduct an orchestra in Spain, followed by a reciprocal invite from Pak for Bragado-Darman to lead Pak’s San Diego Symphony, that sealed this particular deal.
The programming for this weekend was also a reciprocal thing, between Pak, Bragado-Darman and the symphony’s music committee. What emerged is a program of three highly inventive ultra-modern works which make Debussy’s masterpiece La Mer and the concert-closingShostakovich Symphony #9 seem tame by comparison.
Especially notable are the use of pre-recorded humpback whale vocalizations in Alan Hovhaness’ And God Created Great Whales, as well as the use of three giant bowls of water turned into percussion instruments. To play those, guest percussionist Christopher S. Lamb fronts the orchestra for Water Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra by contemporary Chinese experimental composer Tan Dun, who is perhaps better known for his scores for the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero.
To call this performance ambitious would be an understatement.
“We wanted to do some things that the musicians would find interesting and challenging,” Pak says. “The essence for every concert is always the same – to change the listener’s world, and not in a subtle way. In a life-changing, game-changing kind of way.”
MONTEREY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA WITH JUNG-HO PAK, guest conductor, perform at 8pm Saturday, March 16; 3pm Sunday, March 17. Sunset Center, San Carlos and Ninth, Carmel. $40-$61. 646-8511, montereysymphony.org
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