Listen to new winter wonderland at QCSO

One of the showcase pieces on this weekend’s Quad City Symphony Orchestra Masterworks program will be new to most people’s ears, including the featured soloist.

Andrew Parker, principal oboe for the QCSO, had never even heard of John Harbison’s “Snow Country” (1979) before being asked to play it by the QCSO maestro, conductor Mark Russell Smith.

“It isn’t really technically a concerto. I would call it a large chamber work that features the oboe,” Parker, 45, said Wednesday, noting it’s scored for string orchestra. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“I wouldn’t say that it is traditionally beautiful. I think it’s very beautiful in its own way,” Parker said. “It sort of highlights and evokes some of the harsher aspects of the winter. Like, it’s not just glittering sun on ice crystals. It’s like glittering sun that is almost blinding. It’s ice, that’s kind of sharp. It’s a starker kind of beauty.” 

He has played Harbison’s woodwind quintet (written in 1978, the year before “Snow Country”) over the years.

The composer evokes winter in the music harmonies, “the most kind of profound driving force of the mood and atmosphere of whatever you’re playing and the tonal language,” Parker said.

“It’s not atonal, but it’s not traditional tonality either. It’s a little bit more experimental, a little bit more odd,” the oboist said. “That already helps evoke a slightly more unsettled thing. In addition to that, he uses some more complex rhythms in this as well, which is something he does in the woodwind quintet.

“That complex rhythm also makes it feel like a little bit unsettling and a little bit hard to predict,” Parker said. “The other thing is, he uses a lot of interesting sort of unexpected sounds and colors in the string parts as well so that it, to me it creates these effects of ice crystals suddenly erupting out of nowhere or sudden sharp cold wind coming up on you. So it really creates this cold atmosphere.”

In the composer’s own words: “Snow Country was composed in January 1979, during an unusually dark Wisconsin winter. It was commissioned by the New England arts patron and scientist Dr. Maurice Pechet in honor of the birthday of his friend Sir Derek Barton.”

It was composed for the oboist Peggy Pearson, who gave the first performance of both versions of the piece, with string orchestra and with string quintet. The piece was withdrawn for three years, as being not substantial enough for its 12-minute duration.

“The oboe is sometimes primary, sometimes a voice in the texture, submerged only to reemerge as a final lonely voice, braced against a longer winter,” according to its program notes.

Harbison (born 1938) has a catalog of almost 300 works, anchored by three operas, seven symphonies, 12 concerti, a ballet, six string quartets, numerous song cycles and chamber works, and a large body of sacred music that includes cantatas, motets, and orchestral-choral works.

He studied at Harvard University, where he sang with the Harvard Glee Club. He later studied with both composers Walter Piston and Roger Sessions. In 1987, Harbison won the Pulitzer Prize for The Flight Into Egypt, which was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s New Music Group and the L.A. Philharmonic as well as the Cantata Singers and Ensemble.

From Texas to QC

Parker earned his bachelor’s degree at the Eastman School of Music, master’s from Yale University, and doctorate from the University of Michigan. He taught at University of Iowa for six years and made his solo concerto debut with the QCSO in March 2019, performing the 1945 Richard Strauss Oboe Concerto.

Since 2015, he has been associate professor of oboe at the Butler School of Music, University of Texas-Austin. The friendly, enthusiastic musician played his first solo recital in the QCSO’s chamber series, “Up Close,” in January 2022 at the Figge Art Museum, since joining the orchestra in 2009.

Parker is the QCSO musician who travels the farthest – over 1,000 miles – to perform for each concert, usually getting in Wednesday to start rehearsing Thursday for that weekend’s programs. There’s also no direct flights from Austin to Moline, so Parker typically connects in Dallas or Chicago (Wednesday, Nov. 29, he had to connect in Atlanta).

This weekend’s Masterworks is themed “Winter Wonders,” and three of the four pieces will be QCSO premieres, including the Harbison and the 287-year-old opener, George Frideric Handel’s Alexander’s Feast Suite, which will take you through a gambit of fiery revenge, overwhelming love, and transcendent joy, according to an orchestra summary.

Gather under a full moon for the tragic tale of two lovers swept away by a river in Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s “The Indian Spirit at Mesa Falls” from Winter Moons.

You can ward off the coldness of winter with the warmth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s stately yet energetic Symphony No. 39, which has been done just twice in the QCSO’s 109-season history (in 1942 and 1991).

“Andy Parker is a musicians’ musician. Every note he plays has meaning,” QCSO music director and conductor Mark Russell Smith has said. “He plays with direction, sensitivity, and always with an amazing ever-changing and nuanced sound. He is at once a star and a great collaborator.”

“I get gratification from collaborating with my colleagues and friends, like playing a concerto in front of an orchestra or playing a featured solo,” Parker said Wednesday.

“Like this piece is a great honor, and a great treat,” he said of the Harbison. “And I’m thrilled to get asked to do it. And it’s really good for me. It forces me to continue to grow as an artist and musician, but I don’t really derive any particular pleasure from being a featured soloist. I really like collaborating and playing with other people. That’s my primary joy in this.”

Any time he does a public concert, Parker says his heart races and he still gets nervous.

“I’m going to have those sometimes pesky thoughts of, wondering if I’m gonna screw this up and that’s all just part of being a human being,” he said. “I’ve learned how to sort of process that in a healthy way and by focusing on the pleasure of making music with somebody or with multiple people and for people that are there to enjoy something, experience something to be taken on a journey. That’s the key to kind of working through the nerves.”

In upcoming 2024 concerts, Parker will solo in March with the Dallas Wind Symphony in the Legacy Concerto by Oscar Navarro, and then next October, soloing with the QCSO in an oboe concerto by Ruth Gipps, from 1941.

In the next four or five months, Parker also expects to release a new duo record he made with a former QCSO colleague, Lindsay Flowers. She is assistant professor of oboe at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Mead Witter School of Music, where she is a member of the Wingra Wind Quintet.

The next QCSO concerts are Saturday, Dec. 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the Adler Theatre (136 E. 3^rd St., Davenport), and Sunday, Dec. 3, at 2 p.m. at Bartlett Performing Arts Center, 3600 Avenue of the Cities, Moline). For tickets and more information, click HERE.