On Friday, the Lansing Symphony Orchestra will perform the world premiere of a concerto composed by a Michigan State University music professor. It will be the first time David Biedenbender’s River of Time is played for a full audience.
Ahead of their performance, musicians of the orchestra gathered in the Great Hall of MSU’s Wharton Center Tuesday to rehearse. The composer said he had been thinking about the flow of time as an inspiration for the work, and the mass shooting on the MSU campus last February directed his thoughts to the subject of mortality.
“It was a way for me to kind of make sense a little bit of what I was feeling at the time,” Biedenbender explained. "I think of this piece a bit as like a story, and autobiography of what I was thinking and feeling this summer. I’ll try to weave that narrative for the audience, but I don’t think you need to know that in order to enjoy the piece.”
LSO conductor Timothy Muffitt expressed admiration for Biedenbender’s focus on modern life for this work.
“A lot of what we’re hearing comes out of what it’s like to be alive in the 21st century,” Muffitt said. “I feel like this is a piece that will resonate for the listener because it comes out of the human experience today, and in a very powerful way.”
Muffitt said River of Time is unlike any concerto he’s ever come across.
“I think this piece is just going to grab the audience from hello and take them to the end and give them an experience unlike anything they’ve ever had,” he said. “I find it an immensely attractive piece of music, and I think all the listeners will too.”
Biedenbender agreed to write the piece for Neil Mueller. The LSO’s principal trumpeter said he’s thrilled with the result and thinks the audience will share the feeling.
“David’s piece, I think, has great depth, great sort of philosophical underpinnings and has surface beauty as well,” Mueller said. “There’s just, I think, the sweet spot of people will enjoy it the first time they hear it, and I think it will, you’ll be rewarded upon hearing it again.”
River of Time includes three separate movements. Mueller thinks the heart of the piece is the second of those movements.
“It just gives the lyrical side of the trumpet a voice and allows that to be front and forward," he explained.
Composer Biedenbender admitted to some nervousness to hearing the piece for the first time.
“By Friday, we’ll have all the kinks worked out,” he remarked during the rehearsal. “But tonight, everything’s kind of on me. Did I put everything on the page that I needed to put there for the musicians to get it? It’ll be a workshop process, but we’ve got three rehearsals to do it.”
A few minutes later, Muffitt took to the podium to lead the orchestra through River of Time. There were stops and starts along the way. During a short break in the proceedings, Biedenbender said that he’s much less nervous now that he’s heard a full rehearsal of his work.
The concert will open with Mozart’s Symphony No. 35, Haffner, and will close with Bizet’s only symphony, No. 1 in C major. The program begins at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 12 at the Wharton Center.
The Wharton Center is a financial supporter of WKAR.
