Oklahoma City Philharmonic Releases Leshnoff: Elegy • Violin Concerto • Of Thee I Sing

On April 21, 2023, Naxos American Classics released Elegy, Violin Concerto No. 2, Of Thee I Sing [Naxos 8.559927], works for orchestra and chorus on the theme of remembrance, memorialization and hopefulness by Grammy-nominated composer Jonathan Leshnoff. Of Thee I Sing was composed to mark the 25th anniversary of the April 19 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Leshnoff’s Second Violin Concerto features soloist Noah Bendix-Balgley, North Carolina-born First Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, and Elegy, as the composer explains, “is written in memory of the thousands of nameless people who suffered under oppression.” The Oklahoma City Philharmonic is led by Alexander Mickelthwate on all three works, with the addition of Oklahoma City’s Canterbury Voices for Of Thee I Sing.

Leading up to the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, conductor Alexander Mickelthwate asked Leshnoff to propose a memorial commission, which was to become Of Thee I Sing. Mickelthwate envisioned a piece for chorus and orchestra “that transcends the atrocity and focuses on all the good that came out of it in the last 25 years.” Leshnoff, calling it “the most serious commission I have ever received,” rose to the occasion with the help of Samuel Francis Smith’s familiar 1831 poem America (My Country, ’Tis of Thee). At first, Leshnoff’s music depicts the fear and confusion of the event itself. When the chorus finally enters in the last third of the piece, the familiar tune becomes an ironic reflection on the tragedy. Leshnoff gradually transforms the tune, to make sense of both tragedy and the human ability to persist in the face of it. By the end, with one last refrain of the tune and sedate sustained chords in the strings, some peace seems to have been achieved.

Violin Concerto No. 2 is a four-movement “symphony-concerto.” After an energetic opening movement, the second, subtitled “Chokhmah Yud,” is reflective, scored only for violin, strings and harp. Inspired by Leshnoff’s study of Jewish mysticism, the movement is part of an ongoing ten-work, multiyear project that he says “parallels the ten fundamental building blocks of Jewish spiritual thought. ‘Chokhmah,’ in mystical thought, is the unknown, mysterious genesis of any creative idea.” The scherzo is a light-hearted dance, and the involved counterpoint of the finale echoes and reconciles all that has come before. Commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and co-commissioned by the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, Violin Concerto No. 2 received its premiere in May 2018 under Jaap van Zweden with soloist Alexander Kerr in Dallas.

Co-commissioned by the Tennessee Holocaust Commission and the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra as part of music director Yaniv Attar’s “Harmony from Discord” initiative, Elegy is a work in the lineage of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and George Walker’s Lyric for Strings. Like in those works, a sweeping melody and lush orchestration convey great depths of sympathetic feeling, not only for the victims of the Holocaust but of oppression in all times and places. The standard string orchestra is supplemented by harp, timpani, and four horns, which the composer uses to effect in a contrasting middle theme. The final section combines thematic ideas reflecting both “harmony” and “discord” but ends on a major triad that as Leshnoff explains is “symbolic of the hope that has emerged through the dark, discordant eras of history.”