Carol Peckins
Carol Peckins, who plays in the second violin section of the Boston Philharmonic, is part of the group of players who can say that they have been “playing with the BPO since before there was a BPO”; she was among those who followed Benjamin Zander to create the orchestra with its performance of the Mahler Ninth. As the Boston Philharmonic returns to the piece that started it all, Carol reflects upon what it has meant to perform with the orchestra over the years. Her thoughtful comments and her willingness to share make her an apt story-teller, and when she meets with Program Editor Pamela Feo and begins speaking in her lilting voice it is clear that she feels that the Boston Philharmonic holds a significant place in her life.
“The story of how the Civic morphed in the BPO as a result of playing the Mahler Ninth is well told and legendary at this point,” Carol begins, referring to the reason the Boston Philharmonic was created thirty-one years ago. Carol exudes a warm and welcoming presence as she leans in with her arms on the table, offering her complete focus as she share her stories. She describes how Benjamin Zander, who was then conducting Boston’s Civic Symphony, wanted to conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, but the Board believed the orchestra should move in a different, supposedly more “crowd-pleasing” direction. “He was taking the orchestra on a really heavy-duty journey with some really heavy-duty literature. It was about the music. It’s always about the music.” Benjamin Zander left the Civic to stay true to his vision, and all but one of the players followed him. “I got a call from the then-principal second violinist and he said a whole new orchestra was in formation and asked me if I was in. And I was in!” she says with enthusiasm, as though it happened yesterday. Thinking back now over the distance of many years, Carol recognizes qualities that continue to define Benjamin Zander today. “I think Ben exudes this sense of absolute commitment and he attracts people who can be absolutely committed. And he is fearless—absolutely fearless. He is not afraid to bring the orchestra to the brink at every performance. That first experience of playing the Mahler Ninth was difficult, but he treated it like it was obvious. And that’s part of Ben’s style of empowering everyone from the last chair in.” The result of the commitment and vision of Benjamin Zander and the players was a concert hall overflowing with audience members, and thus the Boston Philharmonic was born.
The orchestra today still inspires the same sense of commitment and passion as in that first concert over thirty years ago. As Carol traces the significance of the orchestra over the years, she shares her philosophical view of its all-encompassing nature which goes beyond the practical terms of music-making. As one of the amateur players in the orchestra, Carol has a career as a social worker outside of her commitment to the Boston Philharmonic, and though she sees her job and her playing as two distinct areas of her life, she reflects on how there might be common elements in both. She says, speaking slowly as her thoughts evolve, “Maybe it’s something like this: being a therapist is unbelievably privileged work. People come in to a complete stranger and tell you their story and you have to hold it and sit with it and help them do something good with it. And I am always really touched and humbled by the human capacity for trust and the human capacity for hope even when in many cases life has already taught that neither is a sensible idea. People come in and they do it anyway. And in the same way, I think that music is about the best that you can be and the best that you can offer. It’s about something beyond what we have now.” Carol pauses often as she takes care to find the right way to convey an experience she describes as “beyond words.” She says, “We come to the orchestra with our own stuff—and boy, everybody’s got stuff—and with what our experience in the world is. Over the years a lot of people have said to me, ‘Oh, it must be wonderful to play in an orchestra and get away from it all,’ but I think it’s the opposite with this orchestra. Somehow we are going headfirst into the absolute thick of it, and I think it’s not so much an escape from the really hard stuff of life; instead it’s all there, it’s all welcome and the music holds it all and gives it form.”
Carol says the Mahler Ninth is piece that gains intensity and meaning by embracing each individual player’s story as a unique element of something larger. “I think with Mahler, accumulated life is part of what makes the magic happen. Everything is in there, everything; it’s like everybody’s accumulated story up to that point. The pain and the struggle and the compassion are all there and there are so many things happening at once, but each part is discrete,” she says, comparing the smaller moments to individual lives and the symphony as a whole to the collective group. She believes that the Boston Philharmonic, with its professionals, amateurs and students, holds a blend of stories which adds depth to each performance, and she has developed her own understanding of what she contributes as an amateur. She says, again speaking slowly as she tries to express an idea which may not be obvious, “I wonder if, as amateurs, part of what we contribute is being out in the trenches in a different way, or we are out in different trenches. We bring a different struggle.”
The absolute dedication of the players means that concert time can be intense, and, in much the same way their personal lives find expression in the music, so also the music weaves its way into their lives away from the orchestra. “Each time we do a concert it takes up so much of our psyche,” Carol says. Last summer I drove up to Canada through the White Mountains, and the weather was very moody and there I was with these big hulking mountains and what went off in my head was the Mahler Third. It was perfect because my radio had kicked out at that point! And back when we were doing the Sibelius Fifth, I was watching the sunset over a frozen lake in Boxford and instantly that soaring theme from the piece came into my head. It probably sounds crazy, like I live my life to a BPO soundtrack…but maybe I do!” Carol laughs.
Since those first days of embarking on a new journey together with the members of the newly formed Boston Philharmonic, the orchestra has remained a constant for Carol. “For me it’s been the rock throughout much of my life. I’ve been playing long enough that I kind of grew up in this orchestra, and, well, now here we are, and a lot of life has happened. Through the best and the worst of times, there has always been this orchestra, and it wasn’t the place to get away from everything, but it was the place where everything could just be.” Carol speaks of a comfort that comes from relinquishing to something larger. “Sometimes I get on the stage of Jordan Hall and think about the history of the building, and the Victorians coming to concerts in their dresses, and everyone’s teacher and everyone’s instrument, and there is something about it that puts you in touch with a long line of things over time.” In a similar way, Carol describes the opportunity of playing Mahler’s Ninth Symphony as putting her in touch with her own life experience, by revisiting a work of immense significance from a different place in her life. “Now we get to play the Mahler Ninth again, so we get to assess life again: what’s gone by since the last time, what’s still happening now. And it all goes out there on stage. All of it.”
Written by Pamela Feo