Overture achiever

Johann Stuckenbruck returns to lead Siletz Bay Music Festival orchestra

Johann Stuckenbruck

By Eliot Sekuler

For the TODAY

When Johann Stuckenbruck returns to the Oregon Coast for his second season conducting the Siletz Bay Music Festival Orchestra, he will step onto the podium with something he didn’t have a year ago: a sense of familiarity. Last summer, taking up the festival’s baton for the first time, he knew just two people in the room. This year, he said, he knows everyone.

"It feels like I'm going to make music with a lot of friends rather than a sort of debut, meeting people for the first time," Stuckenbruck said.

For him, that familiarity changes more than just the atmosphere in rehearsal — it shapes what is possible on the podium. Having spent a season learning the orchestra's strengths, Stuckenbruck said he and Artistic Director Mei-Ting Sun could program with more confidence this year, trusting the ensemble to rise to demanding material in the festival's compressed rehearsal schedule.

"We know what the limits are, and they're fantastic musicians," he said. "It means we can program certain things and be confident that we can put it together in the time that we have."

That confidence doesn't mean the process is any less rigorous than it would be with his full-time ensemble, the Orchestre Symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean in Quebec, where he serves as conductor and artistic director.

"Ultimately, nothing really changes in the way that one works," he said. "We just try to do it in the time that we have."

Programming itself is a collaborative back-and-forth with Sun, who, Stuckenbruck observed, brings both deep musical knowledge and a strong sense of thematic direction to each season.

"He gives a sense of theme and direction," Stuckenbruck said. "Then it's just a sort of back and forth: does this fit with the theme? Do we have the time to rehearse this?"

This year, he added, the two arrived at their conclusions quickly.

Stuckenbruck elaborated on the collaboration that produced two contrasting festival programs. "A Night at the Symphony" traces what the conductor described as different facets of the German compositional tradition — opening with Anton Webern's tone poem "Im Sommerwind," steeped in late-Romantic harmony, before moving into Wagner's philosophically-charged song cycle and a Webern orchestration of a Bach fugue from "A Musical Offering."

The program closes with Beethoven's “Symphony No. 8” — the composer’s shortest symphony — and one that is often overshadowed by his other symphonies.

"I'm hoping the audience feels the density of this short but extremely fun piece," Stuckenbruck said.

Julie Boulianne

Joining him for that program's first half is his wife, internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne, fresh off appearances at some of Europe's most prestigious opera houses.

Surprisingly, the couple has performed together only a handful of times, most recently on the same Wagner song cycle in a different arrangement.

Boulianne will also perform in the festival's chamber music series.

The following afternoon's "Sounds of America" concert takes a different tack entirely, pairing Bernstein's “Overture to Candide” and Dohnányi's “Variations on a Nursery Tune” with Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate's "Chokfi' (Rabbit): Sarcasm for String Orchestra and Percussion" and Copland's "Lincoln Portrait." The program's roots, Stuckenbruck said, trace back to Sun wanting to include a piece connected to childhood after the birth of his son — leading to the Dohnányi, a piece that opens dramatically before revealing its playful nature. Bernstein's Candide overture became the ideal opening piece, while Tate's rhythmically driven work offers a sharp stylistic contrast heading into Copland's meditation on Lincoln's words. Asked whether "Lincoln Portrait" carries particular weight in this political moment, Stuckenbruck didn’t hesitate: "Yes, and always," he said. "I think the words of Lincoln, and being able to present that in a concert hall, just remind us what it means to have a forward-thinking, modern society."

For Stuckenbruck, that kind of resonance is exactly what a festival like Siletz Bay can offer that larger institutions often can't.

"We can perform something here, and it means a lot more than the same piece might in a larger festival," he said. "A festival like this creates a very strong sense of community.”

Johann Stuckenbruck will conduct three concerts: a free family concert at 2:30 pm on Saturday, Aug. 22, at Lincoln City’s Schooner Creek Discovery Park, 4815 SE 51st Street; and two concerts at Lincoln City’s Taft 7-12 School, 3780 SE Spy Glass Ridge, the “Night at The Symphony,” at 7:30 pm on Saturday, Aug. 22 (preceded by a pre-concert discussion with Mei-Ting Sun at 6:15 pm) and the “Sounds of America, at 4 pm on Sunday, Aug. 23. For tickets and more information, go to SiletzBayMusic.org or call 541-264-5828.