Concert offers 'different sides of life'
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Folk music and a Brahms symphony made an unusual match for a concert program before a full house in the Tabernacle on Temple Square April 20.
The Orchestra at Temple Square presented its Spring Concert, opening by performing with the eight-member folk group Enoch Train. The orchestra played Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68 for the second part of its program.
After the first selection, Barlow Bradford, music director of the Orchestra at Temple Square and associate director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, gave a brief explanation about the program's unique mixture of music. He described the first part as entertaining, the second as introspective. The program's music, he said, reflected "two different sides of life."
Brother Bradford said that it has been a common practice for people of various faiths to add their words to existing folk tunes to create hymns. Enoch Train and the orchestra performed five selections, three of which are tunes in the Church's hymnal. Music for "Scotland the Brave" is a tribute to Joseph Smith under the title of "Praise to the Man" in the Church's hymnal. The English folk melody "Kings Fold" is known among Latter-day Saints as "If You Could Hie to Kolob." Most members are familiar with "Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd." Enoch Train's encore number included refrains recognizable as "Ye Elders of Israel."
The concluding 45 minutes of the concert featured the Orchestra at Temple Square performing the Brahms classic symphony. Formed in 1999, the yet-young musical organization played with the ease that demonstrates confidence, expertise and excellence usually found only in longer-established groups.
In program notes about the Brahms symphony, Roger Miller wrote: "Seemingly out of nowhere comes one of the most memorable horn passages in all of symphonic music — a magnificent folk melody filled with an almost unbearable melancholy, such as one might have heard from an Alphorn high in the mountains above Salzburg or Zermatt."
If genius is the ability to recognize the obvious, Brother Miller notes, folk and art music each have much of genius.
