The wisdom in picking Post displayed in Sunday concert

By Morley Ballantine - Editor At Large
February 25, 2003

The San Juan Symphony concert Sunday afternoon has to have been one of the most imaginative and provocative performed since the late Jan Roshong put the Farmington and Durango orchestras together in 1986, setting out to create a professional institution.

The first half of the program was devoted to selections largely unknown to the audience; the second half consisted of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, "The Emperor," about as familiar a piece of music to any concert-goer as can be found today. Conductor Arthur Post, in his first season here, explained to a very full Community Concert Hall, why the program had been put together as it had. Each piece, he said, consists of "sounds that have blazed trails through the course of music history. By playing these pieces next to one another, we hope to hear what is new about each one of them."

Put in that context, it was easy to hear why Beethoven, too, was "original," instead of the melodious romantic he’s usually considered to be. The first selection was by an American composer, Stephen Montague, born in 1943, and entitled "Snakebite." I had never heard of Montague. I suspect many others in the audience hadn’t either.
The inspiration for "Snakebite" came from a five-month visit in 1995 to Austin, Texas, where Montague taught "classical" music at the university during the day and listened to country fiddlers in the evenings. He visited the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas, and heard the story told by an old cowboy of how the Plains Indians survived a rattlesnake bite.

" They would quietly lie down on the desert floor, trying not to panic, and close their eyes. If they could will their heart beat to remain sufficiently slow for 18 hours as the poison blackened their bodies and swelled their limbs, they stood at least half a chance of survival."

As Post explained how he would conduct this score, the silence in the hall was palpable. It remained so as the unusual music unfolded. There was the poison spreading, for sure. You could hear it. The second piece was by Charles Ives (1874-1954). Everybody knows Ives and few like his work because of its dissonance. Ives dealt with themes as large as life, we learned. And life is dissonant. Again, the hall was completely silent.

The last was "The River" by Duke Ellington (1899-1974) with a river the metaphor for life. Here jazz was included in a moving composition, and again, an audience was enraptured. After the intermission and after the opening of Beethoven’s "Emperor," with Adam Neiman at the piano, a listener knew this would be a breakthrough performance. Again, Jan Roshong came to mind and the first time he conducted pianist Norman Kreiger and some of us feared the old Baldwin would collapse under Kreiger’s intensity. Arthur Post, what an afternoon you gave us. And to you, Diane Van DenBerg, head of the search committee that found Post, a big bouquet of flowers in honor of your judgment.