Picking the program

On March 2 the Prince Edward Island Symphony Orchestra will present the third concert of the season with Music Director Jaelem Bhate, at Confederation Centre in Charlottetown.

Just prior to the November, 2024 concert, on behalf of The Buzz, I met with Jaelem and asked him how he goes about programming an orchestral season.

“To me the music is about storytelling. It’s never been about the nuts and bolts, the otes and rhythms behind the counterpoint. All that is just in service of the story. And by story I don’t even mean pieces that tell a story—programmatic music. My process in creating a program is to focus on the storytelling element, stories which would resonate most with the Island community.”

The March concert is entitled Ex-Romantico, presenting Pavane Op. 50 by Gabriel Fauré, Horn Concerto by Kati Agócs and Symphony No. 3 in A Minor by Felix Mendelssohn. The PEISO is one of five orchestras that commissioned the piece by Kati Agócs that was written specifically for James Sommerville, a Canadian who is principal hornist for Boston Symphony. I asked Jaelem to elaborate on what the Ex-Romantico theme represented.

“The French horn is, to me, a very romantic instrument. Not romantic as in love but romantic impressionist in a way. Romantic as in reflecting human expression.

“So that got me thinking to what does Romantic music even mean. We classify it as this epoch in classical music of about thirty to forty years in the 19th century. The idea of romantic goes on in my mind with the fact that Kati’s piece has a small instrumentation, so I was thinking what else can I put with this that reflects the same type of ideas? And that led to Gabriel Fauré, kind of an Impressionist composer but very romantic in the sense that [laughs] all late 19th century Parisians were.

“And that led to—who else tells these type of over the top story of humanity? And Mendelssohn fit the instrumentation and also fit the theme. Mendelssohn may have pre- dated the Romantic era by a few decades but the music he wrote was almost like pre- Romantic in a way… His Scottish Symphony has a sweeping quality like you’re on a cliff in Scotland, and then he writes about Mary, Queen of Scots, being executed and the slow movement is very sad and it’s reflective. So, if we go by the definition of Romantic music as telling a big story about human experience, I would say that Mendelssohn is romantic. I’d say that Fauré is romantic and Kati Agócs is romantic. Do any of them come from that forty-year period that music historians call the Romantic period? Nope, so it’s Ex-Romantico.”

In December Jaelem went to London, England to assist Alexander Shelley and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

“The chance to go to an international centre and expand your skills, expand your perspective and your knowledge of what’s out there is always a huge and very exciting opportunity. PEI, wherever I go, is always on my mind so even as I trek to London I’m always thinking about what lessons I can bring back to the orchestra. Then I will repeat that process with the Chicago Civic Symphony in February and the Seattle Symphony in April.”

This is part two of three in conversation with Jaelem Bhate. Next month—Into the Future.