music

As the Minnesota Orchestra began its performance of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony on a Wednesday night last month, violist Sam Bergman strolled onto the Orchestra Hall stage.

"You remember what it was like to be a teenager, right?" he asked, as conductor Sarah Hicks paused and looked in his direction.

The teenage years, Bergman continued, are made up largely of lurches between wild joy and deep angst, "between unexpected tension ... and sudden, cathartic release!" Having piqued the audience's interest, Bergman introduced the evening's topic.

"I'm Sam, she's Sarah, and tonight we're talking Felix."

That's Felix as in the teenage genius Mendelssohn -- the second subject of an "Inside the Classics" series on young wonders. For the next 40 minutes, Hicks and Bergman deconstructed the composer's youthful genius. In the second half, the orchestra performed in full the symphony, which Mendelssohn wrote before he turned 18. Last fall, Hicks and Bergman did much the same with a better-known prodigy, a kid named Mozart, and the program concludes this week when Jay Greenberg, a 17-year-old composer from New York, joins the hosts at Orchestra Hall.

"Inside the Classics" hopes to demystify music, break down decorum and offer audiences a casual chance to learn something about composers and their methods. Other orchestras -- New York, Philadelphia, Oregon, Chicago is a partial list -- have similar programs. Hicks and Bergman meet early in the year and sketch out ideas, then go to their separate corners to fill in the blanks in their brainstorms. By showtime, they have put together a program steeped in casual education and some manner of light entertainment.

Asked how the Minnesota program differs from those of other cities, both hosts talked about Hicks' participation.

"It didn't seem right that the conductor should be an accessory who doesn't talk, which is how it's done in some places," said Bergman. "It became clear right away that Sarah was very comfortable doing the talking and teaching."

That was three years ago, when Hicks and Bergman picked up the existing "Casual Classics" program and were told to "create a show that you would like to go to," said Bergman.

Working on the hook

The first step is to find a unifying thread for each season. This year fell into place easily: Mozart, Mendelssohn and Greenberg -- child geniuses. For Mendelssohn, Hicks and Bergman broke down pieces to show how the melody floats around to different sections of the orchestra (demonstrating tension and release), how the music has a distinctly adolescent energy and how the score requires flutists to double tongue (less racy than it sounds).

Bergman is always on the prowl for a well-turned gambit. For Mozart, he brought in an 11-year-old pianist to play the composer's first works and to perform some parlor tricks. Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny, has emerged as a significant composer (perhaps even having some of her works appropriated by Felix), so singers Christina Baldwin and Jennifer Baldwin Peden came onstage with Jen playing the role of the miffed sister. After some light banter, the sisters sang a lovely little lieder based on a poem by Heinrich Heine.

Another given element is Hicks' three-minute theory segment. That might sound dry, but with Mendelssohn she made it fascinating. Symphony No. 4 (Italian) begins in A major, she noted. Therefore, it should end in the same key. But cagey Felix slipped it to A minor.

"I thought, 'This is the weirdest symphony,' " Hicks said in an interview. "I tinkled on the piano and it sounded completely different in A major, so I rewrote the last movement and generated 36 new parts."

Greenberg's Fifth Symphony, which he wrote when he was 13, will be featured Wednesday and Thursday nights. Juilliard Prof. Sam Zyman has called Greenberg "a prodigy of the level of the greatest prodigies in history when it comes to composition." Bergman and Hicks will explore musical influences and concepts with Greenberg -- and try to avoid the obvious absorption that attends such a young talent.

"For me, it's trying to get people to get away from looking at him like a monkey in a zoo," Bergman said. "We want to make the show about this piece he wrote when he was 13, because it's not the kind of thing a 13-year-old should be able to write. But we don't want to stand up and say, 'Hey, look at this brilliant kid!' "

If that seems a fine line, it is. Bergman would argue, though, that they want to steer the discussion more to the music than the man -- or boy.

"It's strictly about, 'What did you mean here in the music?' " said Hicks.

In next season's "Inside the Classics," the orchestra will feature masterpieces inspired by nature -- such as Beethoven's "Pastoral" symphony and Debussy's "La Mer." (See box for details.) Bergman said the target audience for the series is no more complicated than "people who like music." The program seems to fit that simplicity. At the conclusion of the Mendelssohn evening, we walked away feeling that we'd learned something, the music had become more transparent, understandable.

"It's just a different way of looking at the concert experience," said Hicks.

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299