Youngsters introduced to BSO Young pianist featured

ORONO – If you’re going to play Edvard Grieg for nearly 4,000 people in one day, you’ve just got to have tympani – and great strings, awesome brass and wondrous woodwinds.

On Monday, Abigail Greene had them all. The tympani thundered its cue, and pianist Greene launched into the crashing opening notes of Piano Concerto in A Minor at the Maine Center for the Arts.

Greene’s performance on the grand piano was part of three Bangor Symphony Youth Concerts held on the University of Maine campus to introduce youngsters to orchestral music.

Her fingers lingered over the lyrical parts of the piece, with the strings answering sweetly.

“It was exhilarating,” Greene said of performing with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. “I was more excited than nervous.”

A pianist for 12 years, the 17-year-old senior at George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill has wanted to play with an orchestra since she was a child.

Having the orchestra there was “so different from piano accompaniment. You’re enveloped in the sound. The orchestra is a great base underneath you,” she said.

Greene, who hopes to become a music teacher, added that it was incredible to perform for the youngsters.

Greene was the chosen soloist because she won the Annis-Cupp Award in the BSO High School Concerto Competition this year. Some of the runners-up who played in the symphony Monday were: Simon Bilyk of Orono, Elisabeth Gayer of Cape Elizabeth and Christie Rowden of Sanford.

Also performing Monday was the Bangor Symphony Youth Orchestra, which draws young musicians from around the state.

As classes from several schools filed into the MCA, the youth orchestra played a jazzy “Blues Killed for a Cat,” with solo time given to several players.

Then the BSO took over, offering music not only for new listeners but for budding musicians.

Crystal Grandberry, a fifth-grader at State Street School in Brewer, is a clarinetist. But her attention was drawn to some very special instruments.

“I liked the bottles,” Grandberry said.

Four BSO members, in fact, “played” glass bottles of various sizes and shapes by blowing across the openings. Each bottle contained a specific amount of water so that the air vibrations would create the right note.

The bottles were key to playing “Land of Bottle,” a fanciful piece composed by BSO principal bassist Bob Rohe more than 40 years ago.

Orchestra musicians playing the bottles were Peggy Jo Wilhelm as Princess Nola, Louis Hall as the dwarf, Scott Burditt as the king and a mustachioed Steve North as the evil Baron Seltzer who threatens to take over the little civilization on the far side of the moon.

With just eight notes among them, the quartet provided delightful calliopelike fanfares, and, at one point, used straws to change their tune for the “bubble dance.”

For information on Bangor Symphony Youth Concerts or other BSO activities, call 942-5555.