Tucson Symphony Orchestra brings Mozart's winds serenade to digital stage

Tucson Symphony Orchestra unveiled its digital stage last month with a recital by its Concertmaster Lauren Roth.

About 250 people tuned in when the concert streamed on the TSO’s Up Close season Digital Stage Oct. 16. Since then, 925 people have watched the concert on the orchestra’s Vimeo channel (vimeo.com/tucsonsymphony).

“I think a lot of people were waiting to see what it was going to be like. … When they actually saw what we were doing, they were like wow this looks great, this sounds great,” said Benjamin Nisbet, TSO’s orchestra and artistic manager. “I’m happy that people realize that we did put a lot of thought into this.”

The orchestra will put on its second Digital Stage concert at 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 13, when eight members of the TSO winds section perform Mozart’s Serenade No. 11 for Winds in E-flat Major.

TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez said he picked the winds serenade as a fill-in for Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 “Jupiter,” which the orchestra had planned to perform in November before COVID-19 derailed their 2020-21 season last March. It was one of two Mozart symphonies that were originally planned for November before the orchestra shifted gears in early August to a reimagined digital season.

Serenade No. 11 was Mozart’s first serenade composed for winds and originally he intended it for wind sextet before later adding oboes in the version the TSO will perform Friday. Gomez, speaking from his home in Italy where he has been since the pandemic exploded worldwide last spring, said he chose the Serenade No. 11 because it has the feel and musical strength of a Mozart symphony.

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“It has the density and character of one of Mozart’s great symphonies,” he explained. “The whole idea of a serenade is entertainment, but he took it to the next level and that’s why you have masterpieces.”

Friday’s concert was filmed at the Tucson Symphony Center performance hall, where the orchestra hosts its Just for Kids concerts as well as smaller chamber and ensemble concerts. The eight musicians — oboists Michael Johnson and Tiffany Pan, clarinetists Dario Brignoli and Chauncey Roach, bassoonists Letitia Bryant and Benjamin Yingst and horn players Johanna Lundy and Victor Valenzuela — socially distanced in the sizeable performance hall while a trio of cameras including one mounted to a 14-foot ladder captured the performance from several angles, giving viewers a birdseye view of the musicians that you probably wouldn’t get from sitting in the audience.

“With eight players and properly distancing them and making it safe, that takes up a lot of space,” Nisbet said. “What we’re doing for safety purposes for eight people takes up the amount of space of what we would do for 35 people.”

“To put eight instruments on the stage felt almost like having the full orchestra,” added Gomez. “You want to take care of the health of your musicians. This virus is there all the time; it hasn’t left us. We have to be careful. But we are also grateful that we have the space that we have. It’s an opportunity to showcase these beautiful combinations.”

Gomez said he programmed the orchestra’s Up Close season with works by the same composers whose works were on the lineup for the 2020-21 season. On Dec. 4, a TSO septet will perform Beethoven’s Septet, which replaced Beethoven’s grand choral Symphony No. 9 that was on the original season lineup for mid-December.

“Our audience was excited about what we were going to do and it was taken away from everybody,” Gomez said. “So we are trying to honor that original season.”