By Virginia M. Wright
From our September 2024 issue
To kick off the Portland Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary this month, music director Eckart Preu will conduct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony alongside his longest-serving predecessors: Bruce Hangen and Robert Moody, who each led the orchestra for 10 years, and Toshi Shimada, who directed for 20 years. “Each of us will conduct a movement, and it’ll be interesting to see how each shapes the orchestra,” says Preu, who’s held the baton since 2019. “Beethoven’s Ninth, with ‘Ode to Joy,’ is the symphony composition in all of history that celebrates humanity the most. Everybody knows it. It’s the ultimate celebratory piece.”
Shared conductorship of one of the greatest symphonies ever composed is unprecedented for the PSO and possibly for any orchestra anywhere, Preu says. It’s a fitting start to an innovative season that includes the PSO’s first-ever concert (already sold out) with world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and a string of collaborative performances, such as Puccini’s La bohème with Opera Maine, Orff’s Carmina Burana with Portland’s ChoralArt chorus, and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet with Portland Stage actors reciting lines from Shakespeare’s play before each movement. “I’m really proud of the diverse programming,” Preu says. “It’s not just that there are diverse composers and performers. It’s that every time you come to the symphony, you will have a different experience.” In a century of concert seasons, the lineup is one of many high notes.
1924
The all-volunteer Amateur Strand Symphony Orchestra debuts at Portland’s Strand silent-movie theater, playing intermissions between the romantic melodrama The Next Corner and the comedy Fair Week. Conductor Arthur Kendall, who also directs the theater’s small house band, recruited the 75 musicians through newspaper ads. The Portland Press Herald pronounces the premiere “the greatest orchestral treat of the year.” Eventually, the group reorganizes as the Portland Symphony Orchestra, with the City Hall auditorium as its principal venue.
1930
The PSO audience is enthralled as guest musician Mischa Tulin performs otherworldly yet melodious renditions of Schubert’s “Ave Maria” and Saint-Saëns’s “The Swan” by moving his hands over a theremin, a new-fangled contraption resembling a secretary desk with antennas, during the orchestra’s first concert featuring an electronic instrument.
1959
Musicians take to the stage in attire befitting the PSO’s new professional status — the men in white ties and tailcoats that director Rouben Gregorian scooped up at thrift stores in Boston and the women in black gowns. Going pro — that is, paying players — will improve morale and attract the best musicians, PSO president Horace K. Sowles Jr. tells the Press Herald. Department stores mark the occasion by dressing their windows with scenes of concertgoers wearing mink stoles and taffeta gowns.
1974
Pianist Van Cliburn, whose exuberant stage mannerisms and effect on teenage girls once drew comparisons to Elvis, joins the PSO for its 50th anniversary. The Evening Express heralds a “ringing, virile” performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto by the celebrity Texan, whose contract requires warm milk be made available in his dressing room.
1986
Rain forces the PSO to perform its Fourth of July concert at City Hall instead of in Cape Elizabeth’s Fort Williams Park. The First New Market Militia adjusts for the scenery change by firing muskets out the third-story windows during Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. The composition has been a fixture (usually with thundering cannons) of PSO outdoor concerts since conductor Bruce Hangen introduced them in 1981.
1997
Too excited to wait for a rehearsal to test the acoustics at the newly renovated and renamed Merrill Auditorium, in City Hall, PSO conductor Toshi Shimada sneaks onstage and plays his clarinet for workers applying finishing touches. “To have a renovated hall and get to try it first — it’s almost like having a child,” Shimada later explains.
2020
In the midst of the pandemic, the PSO performs its first prerecorded, online concert, the “Magic of Christmas.” The 41st edition of the popular holiday program features musicians, dancers, and singers, sometimes wearing masks and sitting or standing far apart, in an 87-minute video that viewers can stream on demand.
