By Rebeca Cardoso, For the Gavel -

On Nov. 7, the Boston College Symphony Orchestra held their first concert of the year in the Irish Room in Gasson Hall. The Irish Room was hardly large enough to contain the many family members, friends and curious students who came to watch. Conducted by the distinguished John Finney, the BCSO provided an awe-inspiring performance of a difficult repertoire of classical music.

The audience filled the Irish room to capacity, and the setting enhanced the performance. The first row of the audience sat merely yards away from the orchestra at eye level with the players, while the many unable to find a seat remained standing.

The program started off with a piece by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy as a commemoration of this great composer’s 200th birthday. The chosen performance piece was Fingal’s Cave, (also known as The Hebrides), a composition that was inspired by Mendelssohn’s first visit to the actual cave in Scotland.

While the orchestra played, it was easy to imagine the peace of the seaside cave grotto contrasted with the suddenness of a storm. The sweeping melody found in the ascending and descending musical runs called to mind represented the wind, and was shown in the sweeping hand gestures of Finney as he conducted the piece. The swelling of the ocean was done very nicely by the group in the careful “swelling” of the musical phrase, as the orchestra as a whole crescendoed and decrescendoed to great effect. The end of the storm was characterized by two clarinets whose soft notes hung over the underlying final moving lines of the storm.

The second selection was Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Op. 64 by Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky, a Russian composer best known for composing The Nutcracker and Swan Lake.

The first movement of the Symphony, Andante-Allegro con anima, begins with a slow melody that calls to mind a dirge. Tchaikovsky thought of this movement as one’s acceptance of his or her own fate. The musical “motto” that repeated in every movement of the piece is introduced in at the very opening of the piece.

This melancholy tone was changed as the tempo accelerated, and the depressing atmosphere was quite suddenly banished by the soft and steady march of the stringed instruments while the sound of the woodwinds floated gracefully overhead. The movement finally gave way to a grand, march-like air that expresses a sense of hope. The opening melancholy melody does not come back in the movement, although the tempo does decrease and increase again. The lamentations have turned into acceptance, although there is a hint of aggression in the music that is quieted at the very end.

The second movement, Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza, features the horn section. After the turbulent first movement, a sense of what can be interpreted as defeat is evoked by the steady and calm voice of the French horn. There is a temporary, light-hearted distraction by the oboe, but the resounding notes of the low string instruments forces one the audience to recall the seriousness of the subject at hand. A graceful melody follows, was is often interrupted by musical stumbles when an expected resolution to a musical idea is was not provided. Light, peaceful moments contrast with loud turbulent ones. While the movement ends in a peaceful, serene state, the trend foreshadows that more turbulence is to come.

The Valse, the third movement of the symphony, is the briefest of the movements. It is full of fast runs and calls for speedy technique,, yetthis hardly provided a hurdle for the Symphony Orchestra, which made everything sound effortless.

The fourth movement, the Finale, is reminiscent of the turmoil of the first movement. It starts off in a controlled manner, but as the movement progresses, the sense of inevitability and the one’s struggle to accept cope with accepting it is evoked once more through the frantic, rushed musical lines.

The majestic tone that is achieved as the movement matures evokes the feeling of judgment ─ a sense of being. One is now facing with all that he or she had previously been avoiding. The grandiosity of the closing seems to say, though you may try, in the end there is something greater than the individual.

There are, of course, various ways to interpret the music. It is this that draws to many to this art; each person can have his or her own unique experience with a musical piece. This guarantees that listening to music can never get old. No matter how many critiques one reads, the actual experience of hearing a piece for oneself is valuable. The Irish Room’s intimate setting encouraged listeners to formulate their own opinions while experiencing the BCSO’s performance.

The BCSO’s next performance on campus will be their annual Christmas concert with the University Chorale.

Christopher Bambrick, BCSO violinist and CSOM ’11, says the BCSO rehearses twice a week and is comprised of students from all schools and levels at BC as well as guest performers from outside of Boston College. Guest musicians come from the surrounding area and are taken in to fill in gaps in the instrumentation that may exist after the rigorous audition process.