PORT ANGELES — One of the things about classical music, says maestro Matthew Savery, is that it does away with the politics, the religion, the viewpoints on current events.
“All that stuff that divides us,” he says — it falls away as a concerto begins.
“Nothing matters except your commitment to the composer,” be it Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, take your choice.
Savery and the 55-piece Port Angeles Symphony will commit themselves to the classics this Saturday in two public performances: the dress rehearsal at 10 a.m. and the evening concert at 7:30 p.m.
Both will take place in the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave.
As the seventh of eight candidates for the post of permanent conductor, Savery will guide the orchestra into the overture from Mikhail Glinka’s “Russlan and Ludmilla;” Antonin Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony and, with guest artist Deborah Rambo Sinn, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, aka the “Emperor” concerto.
In rehearsal earlier this week, Savery didn’t talk a lot. His approach is to have the players play their music, to move through it, feel how it feels.
He doesn’t have the urge to go on about how much he knows about the composers’ lives and the music’s history.
“I try to do as much as I can nonverbally,” Savery says.
In his 21st year directing the Bozeman, Mont., Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Choir and his seventh leading the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra — all professional groups — Savery is working with a volunteer orchestra here.
He’s impressed by the variety of ages: from high school students to elder statesmen and -women.
“The essence of what makes an all-volunteer orchestra great,” he says, “is that anybody who can cut it can play.”
This is not easy music they’re performing, Savery adds.
“The Dvorak symphony is really special. The guy could write a melody, no question. But there’s more depth with this one,” he says of the Eighth Symphony.
While the Beethoven piece is called a piano concerto, he calls it a great showcase for the orchestra. And the Glinka overture is “a fun frolic, to set the tone for the evening, to put everybody in a good mood.”
Composers such as Beethoven, Savery adds, wrote their music for everybody — not just for the pros to play.
Rambo Sinn, for her part, has attended most of the Symphony’s concerts this season and said the orchestra is sounding better than it has in a long while. She hasn’t worked with Savery before, but she’s watched videos of him at work.
“I love the way he conducts,” she said, adding that she’s more than ready to play the Beethoven concerto.
“The piece is quite bold,” Rambo Sinn said. “There’s never a dull moment in it.”
Savery, 48, is a native of Massachusetts who first earned a degree in jazz at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music. Later, at the University of Michigan, he received his master’s in music while founding the University Campus Chamber Orchestra; he next directed the Comic Opera Guild of Ann Arbor.
Savery has been conducting orchestras for some three decades; he has led performances in some 14 states as well as in Victoria, Italy, Turkey and Ukraine. Six weeks from now on June 5, he’ll make his Carnegie Hall debut with violinist Alexander Markov and a string orchestra.
At Saturday’s concerts, Port Angeles Symphony musicians and audience members will have the opportunity to fill out forms evaluating Savery as a conductor. His visit comes near the end of a nine-month search for the Symphony’s next maestro, a search that is expected to finish with a selection in May or June.
After Savery, the next and final candidate is Wesley Schulz of the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra, who is slated to lead the Port Angeles Chamber Orchestra on May 8 and 9.
“Orchestras breathe differently,” Savery says. “That keeps you on your toes.”
Developing the musicians’ trust is one of the most challenging parts of conducting, he adds.
“It takes time. It’s the same with any relationship: It’s about compatibility and chemistry.”