Saturday, Oct. 28, the Concert Hall in the new Music Building came alive as the College of William and Mary’s Symphony Orchestra kicked off the spooky season with its annual Halloween Concert.
The concert was a significant undertaking for the WMSO as it required the orchestra to adapt to an entirely new space and perform two pieces from the late-Romantic composer Max d’Ollone for the first time since the early 1900s as well as two others for the first time in American history. Additionally, the entire program was recorded prior to the concert, making WMSO one of only a few outfits that have recorded works by the composer and the only orchestra to have recorded “Le temple abandonné” and “Les funérailles du poéte.”
Associate Professor of Music and Director of Orchestras David Grandis expressed how lifting the veil on the new Music Building has been especially anticipated by members of the music department faculty.
“I must say that for ten years, it has been logistically difficult because we had to beg the theater department to use PBK at the end of the semester before, and for the concert in the middle of the semester we had no other way than Sadler and Commonwealth Auditorium, which is pretty bad,” Grandis said.
In addition to the issue of finding spaces suitable for orchestral performances on campus, Grandis explained that the logistics and acoustics of rehearsing prior to the completion of the Music Building were less than optimal.
“The rehearsing conditions are so much better than before in Ewell 207,” Grandis said. “It was horrid, and right now it’s very, very good, so the orchestra is making progress, too, because people can hear each other, and that’s a huge difference.”
Violist Ben Neifeld ’25 also valued the improvements that the new rehearsal space brought.
“The acoustics are fantastic,” Neifeld said. “When I’m close to everyone, it’s magical, you know? It’s nothing like Ewell.”
The transition into the new space has not been without its challenges, however. Grandis recalled the delays in the completion of its construction.
“It was difficult because it was supposed to be ready early spring 2023, and then it was supposed to be ready after graduation, and then it ended up being ready two weeks before the beginning of classes in August,” Grandis said. “That was insane because we had to do pretty much everything at the last minute.”
The rush to get ready was further burdened by the complexity of the new facility and the absence of a technical manager. Although a technical manager will arrive in the spring, it was up to the orchestra itself to take charge of the rigging, lighting and curtains this time around.
Grandis originally conceived the program, which featured the works of Max d’Ollone, several years ago. He has spent ample time researching the composer after initially becoming aware of him when writing a book on French opera for his PhD thesis.
“I discovered some operas by Max d’Ollone, a contemporary of Ravel that I didn’t know, and listened to his operas. I felt that the language was really beautiful. And then later on I discovered a recording of his symphonic music,” Grandis said. “I made some research and I found more symphonic music but never recorded outside the ‘Lamento,’ ‘Les villes maudites’ and ‘Fantasy.’”
This prompted Grandis to get in touch with Max d’Ollone’s grandson, Patrice d’Ollone, who is a composer in his own right and the former head of the Orchestre National de France. As a result, Grandis decided to lead a concert featuring Patrice d’Ollone at the piano, scheduled for April 2020.
Unfortunately, the concert was curtailed by the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and Patrice d’Ollone’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, which meant he could no longer perform the concert. Even so, the pieces “Nostalgie” and “Lamento” on the program were both composed by Patrice d’Ollone.
More recently, Grandis has been in contact with Serge de Sampigny, who is a French documentary film director, nephew to Patrice d’Ollone and great-grandson to Max d’Ollone. De Sampigny made the trip from Paris to see the concert and visit historical sights in the area to which the d’Ollone family has an unlikely connection.
“I’ve never been to Virginia before, nor in Williamsburg,” de Sampigny said. “And for me, it’s very interesting because of this concert, of course, because I like the music from my grandfather, but also because my grandfather’s father’s father, the great grandfather of Max d’Ollone, he was fighting with Lafayette in the Yorktown battle and so was his brother. So this is a kind of double entry for us to be in here, music and story.”
Through his travels over the preceding ten days, de Sampigny said he felt both welcomed by and impressed with the area.
“I think everything that’s going on here is very elegant, and I’m not surprised but impressed by the elegance of the people we meet and the kindness of the people we meet,” de Sampigny said. “Walking here in Williamsburg is so, so nice to do. You never get bored, of course, because of the history, the landscape, the houses, everything. But I would say mainly the people. This is something that we don’t know, we do not know about [in France], and this is an argument to come and visit.”
Although Patrice d’Ollone could not be present due to his health complications, de Sampigny emphasized that the concert was still a great comfort to his uncle, who was able to watch videos taken of the rehearsal and concert.
“He has Alzheimer’s, so it’s very difficult for him,” de Sampigny said. “But he could see the videos that I sent him from the rehearsal that they did two days ago. And his wife told me that he was very happy, and he felt a lot about what’s going on here.”
The concert was also the first time that de Sampigny heard “Les funerailles du poète,” which was being played using copies of handwritten manuscripts. Grandis shared that this format led to some unique challenges for the orchestra.
“For two of them, it’s handwritten, and no new publishing company in France has printed it properly,” Grandis said. “So my score, sometimes I had to magnify and to read it with a magnifying glass because sometimes I don’t see the lines. I had to play on the piano and try to decipher what it is supposed to be.”
The program provided unique opportunities for both the soloist, Instructor of Piano Daniel Inamorato, and the conductor to make the pieces their own while also striving to interpret them with as much justice to Max d’Ollone’s vision as possible. Inamorato, an adjunct lecturer of applied music and a piano instructor at the College, shared his enthusiasm about the possibilities offered by the program.
“The opportunity is not always here for you to learn a new piece that nobody plays, for you to learn a piece from zero where there is one recording on YouTube but not many references out of that, so you can make it your own,” Inamorato said. “…Then, to perform with the students, and to partner with David, who is an excellent conductor — I think it’s not every day that those opportunities come to you, so it’s very gratifying.”
Additionally, the concert fits well with Inamorato’s interest in performing underrepresented works. Having grown up in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Inamorato has been exposed to different works from different parts of the world that he wishes to share with others in moments like these.
“I think it’s nice to make it clear that we are always looking for not only opportunities to perform in town, but to bring these pieces that are rare to the community,” Inamorato said. ”The amount of Brazilian music that I try to perform here [is] to kind of bring awareness and to just bridge the gap culturally speaking, since so little [is played] from Latin America or from places like Paris, [and] it’s not always that you hear the amount of good stuff we have.”
This concert ultimately comes as the culmination of WMSO’s many rehearsals and practices that have been ongoing since at the start of the semester. Daisy Au-Yeung, a violinist and senior at Cardiff University who is attending the College for the year through an exchange program, shared her excitement about the preparation process.
“I’m quite happy because this program is quite challenging, and I’m happy that my skills are able to achieve nearly all of them,” Au-Yeung said.
Being a Halloween-themed concert, however, the gravity of the American premieres and efforts of the orchestra were balanced by a yearly lighthearted costume contest. The winner of the contest, who was selected by a panel of faculty and staff, conducted John Phillips Souza’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” to close out the concert.
“I do love that it’s celebration and serious,” Dean of Students Stacy Harris, who judged the contest for the second time, said.
The commitment to maintaining this healthy duality was underscored by how WMSO members performed the entire concert program in their dress clothes for the recording and then again in Halloween costumes for the audience later in the evening.
The Halloween Concert this year served not only as a way to inaugurate the new Music Building and to continue an annual tradition, but it also marked a capstone in years of research and coordination regarding the performance of Max d’Ollone’s music.
“It is exciting to bring back to life something that has been so unfairly neglected,” Grandis said. “I’m looking forward also for some kind of closure. The students have worked a long time on this. They are doing a good job. And I hope we can showcase their work in the best conditions for the grand finale for the whole project.”
CORRECTION (11/07): A previous version of the article said “I think” twice in one of the quotes. The article has been updated to keep only one instance of this repeated phrase.
