Concert leaves students thinking

decathconcert042: Academic Decathlon Concert

Conductor John Farrer, his hands a blur, leads the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra through an electric performance at the Academic Decathlon Concert.

Competing in the Academic Decathlon requires students to immerse themselves in subject areas in which they may not be all that familiar. Most are pretty up to date on subjects such as math, English and history, but not music, since not everyone is required to take it. To help bridge the gap, once a year the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, Kern County Academic Decathlon Association and the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra present the Kern County Academic Decathlon Concert.

This year’s concert took place on Oct. 27 at the Bakersfield Convention Center. It is such a rare and unique event, providing a live symphony orchestra for the purpose of teaching, that high schools from throughout California drive miles to attend. Hundreds of students packed the convention center to hear “An Introduction to the Music of the Classical Era: The Legacy of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.” The music was all selected from the national Academic Decathlon music CD and study guide of the same name.

“I was up at 5:45 this morning to make this concert but made sure I got plenty of sleep the night before” said one student from Mark Kapel High School in El Hambra, who preferred to remain anonymous. “You can listen to the CD’s, but this live performance gives you a real musical impression and background for the works of composers like Mozart. It was well performed and elegant.”

To further help students prepare for the Academic Decathlon, the concert also featured lecture on the subject from California State University, Bakersfield Professor of Music Jerry Kleinsasser. Kleinsasser’s role was that of guide and narrator, explaining the styles and musical characteristics of the Classical Era (1750-1825) composers before each work was demonstrated by the symphony during the concert.

Students learned it was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who made the piano popular in the 1780s. Kleinsasser explained that at Mozart’s time the piano was a relatively new instrument. Most composers still wrote for the harpsichord. Not Mozart, who inked a total of 27 piano concertos.

Ludwig Van Beethoven made his mark with his Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, “Eroica.” According to Kleinsasser, it took music away from the romantic and replaced it with the heroic, as it was written to honor Napoleon. “Eroica” also changed the form and structure of music. It was longer by half, than any piece written before it.

Beethoven intimidated another famous composer, Franz Schubert. Schubert left several compositions incomplete because he felt they just didn’t measure up to Beethoven. It did not stop Schubert from being one of history’s most prolific composers, penning more than 500 pieces in his career.

Centennial High student Steffanie Wise came out of the concert impressed. “It definitely shows what you can accomplish, if you do a lot of work and put your whole mind into it,” she said.

Music brought out the emotions in students, too. Several were visibly moved by Beethoven’s “String Quartet Opus 131” with the symphony’s violins and violas exchanging melancholy chords that Kleinsasser said were designed to illicit tears. Then, the tempo changed to humorous for Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni,” in which Kleinsasser explained, “A frustrated Don Juan goes oh-for-four during the opera.” Even though the lyrics were Italian, University of Southern California Opera School singers Phillip Schneider, Joshua Hong and Anya Matanovic had students laughing, applauding and cheering loudly as they performed an animated scene from “Don Giovanni.”

Undoubtedly, the concert/lecture provided a creative means to remember the material needed for the Feb. 5 Kern County Academic Decathlon at Bakersfield College. But it may have provided something else.

“If an opera came to Bakersfield, I would definitely want to come see it,” said Centennial High student Brittany Ramos. “I had never seen one before, and what we saw was so exciting to watch.”


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