There’s nothing quite like the moment when the house lights start to dim in a crowded performance hall. The crowd hushes, the stage lights come on, and in this case, a lone oboist stands up and smiles out at the audience. “Welcome,” he says, “to a classical music tasting menu.”
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra came to Cornell University’s Bailey Hall on October 26, 2025. They came as a mere twenty-eight musicians, only five at most per part. With them, they brought a selection of French pieces, renowned solo violinist James Ehnes, and most exciting of all, no conductor to be seen. Any ensemble musician can tell you that performing without a conductor is surprisingly difficult; with no one to keep time, parts can lose sync with one another or struggle to balance their volumes, or the entire ensemble can change tempo drastically. But Orpheus performs its pieces with mastery and refinement that even an orchestra with a conductor often cannot achieve.
The orchestra itself is a testament to the height of ensemble achievement: every part so spectacularly balanced with every other that unless one listens closely, the orchestra sounds like a single, awesome, hive-minded body. Each part and instrument can be picked out with enough attention to the individual, each note and technique immaculate but not sufficient. The solos are modest yet stunning and serve only to further the group as a whole in their performance of each piece.
For instance, the first piece, Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, began with a sweet and simple flute melody which slowly invited the rest of the ensemble in, swelling to a lush scene with the flute’s initial motif passed from instrument to instrument. To the audience, it was almost like watching the prelude’s faun traipse through an instrumental glade, listening carefully for it to dart from one instrument to the next. In Cartes Postales by Jessica Meyer, a seaside portrait was vividly painted with the help of a squawking string instrument, which called to mind a seagull without distracting from the stormy crashing of waves created by the rest of the orchestra.
In contrast, James Ehnes, who played solo violin with the ensemble, represents peak individual accomplishment. A violin prodigy since age five, Ehnes wielded his Stradivarius like a sword, piercing the air with high, clear notes, and precision in his fastest passages. His movements were dramatic and sweeping; his feet even left the ground once or twice. His performances alongside the orchestra were sublime, but the highlight of his appearance by far was his encore: the last movement of Bach’s third violin sonata, a grand uptempo solo which Ehnes performed with a fire unmatched at any other point in the concert.
This is not to say that the concert was one unending highlight. With the exception of the Bach encore and Meyer’s piece, the concert was entirely French music from the same time period. The effect was a wash of serene and mild music that blended into itself from piece to piece, leaving very few pieces standing out of the greater fold. If this was a tasting menu, it was one with very little variability, a few remarkable palate cleansers notwithstanding. In particular, Chausson’s Poème for violin and orchestra (starting off the second half of the concert) came across as rather unmemorable and a misuse of both the orchestra’s talents and James Ehnes’s. Furthermore, though Orpheus and Ehnes were excellent separately, Ehnes’s blinding performances took away from the spectacularity and subtlety of Orpheus’s. Despite these slight shortcomings, the concert was still an overwhelmingly positive experience overall.
Bookending the narrative’s start, the lights come back on. The concert ended with uproarious applause and a standing ovation for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and their guest musician. One can see the sheer number who make up the audience, all on their feet, all moved by this exemplar of the heights good classical music can still reach: powerfully unified at times, delightfully singular at others, always demonstrative of the laborious hours put in to learn it. It’s a heartening sight, in a time when classical music is largely out of the public picture. And there’s nothing quite like going through a concert and coming out the other side: changed, awake, and inspired to keep reaching for the heights you’ve now seen are possible to attain.