Something From Nothing

Go! feature

The Hamilton Fairfield Symphony Orchestra kicks off another landmark season this weekend with the 25th annual Tillmann Memorial Concert.

Conductor and musical director Paul Stanbery will celebrate his 13th season with the baton, having conducted his first HFSO concert, also a Tillmann Concert, in 1995.

His longevity will surpass that of Dr. Joseph Bein, the founding conductor for the first 13 seasons, who died last month and will be the subject of a special tribute at Sunday’s concert.

Born in New York City in 1917, son of Polish Jewish immigrants who moved to Louisville, Ky., when he was 8 years old, Bein started his violin studies at an early age and performed with the Louisville Symphony when he was 12. He graduated from the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, in 1941.

After a stint as the commander of a tank squad in World War II, where he earned a bronze star for heroism and was one of the first soldiers on the scene at the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, he finished his masters degree at Eastman, married Leila Allen Voiers of Jeffersonville, Ind., and landed in Oxford to teach in the music department at Miami University in 1948.

In 1951, Hamilton dentist Fred Baumgartner persuaded Bein to begin a string orchestra in Hamilton.

Dave Baumgartner, the dentist’s son who has played with the symphony himself off and on since 1953, said that Bein was an excellent musician.

“His interpretation of a piece when he played was very authentic and expressive,” said Baumgartner, who still plays with the symphony.

Violinist Lucy Herndon, who is celebrating her 50th year with the orchestra this season, first met Bein in 1957 at Miami University, and when her daughters Lynn and Lynda started playing violin, they went to Bein for lessons.

“He had enormous hands and feet,” Lynn Herndon Denney said. “When I first met him, he scared me to death, but he was such a gentle man he became like a grandfather to me.

“When he gave lessons, he would sing with you while you played.”

Carrie Patrick Ruoff also took lessons from Bein as a child.

“He would only take certain students who had playing ability and a desire to learn and practice,” she said. “He had a lot of knowledge and passion for music and was one of the best teachers around at the time.”

Christine Nichols played in an informal string quartet with Bein, his wife and cellist Bob Fryxell for over 15 years.

“We played every quartet there was,” she said. “We would always play a Hadyn quartet to begin and a Mozart quartet to end, and in between we played whatever quartet we wanted to do, but while we played there was no discussion, and would have four hours of wonderful playing that we did entirely for ourselves.”

By the time Bein celebrated his 13th season, the nine-piece Hamilton String Orchestra into the 50-piece Hamilton Symphony Orchestra (the name was changed again in the 1970s to include Fairfield).

In honor of Bein’s memory, the orchestra will include Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

In the ensuing years, seven other conductors led the orchestra until Stanbery joined in 1995. The orchestra had fallen on lean years in the early ‘90s, and only played the Tillmann concert the previous year.

“It was a difficult time and there was some question whether (the orchestra) should even continue,” Stanbery said. “But the community seemed ripe for this kind of change.”

Now, even though Stanbery said he was advised that the community might be able to support one or two concerts a year, the symphony performs about 12 times a year, including a busy summer Pops season. Stanbery attributes the growth to recruiting an active board of directors, requiring all members to also serve on a committee.

The Tillmann Concerts began in 1982 at the bequest of the late Mary Tillmann in memory of her daughter Diane, who died in 1968 at the age of 35, and husband Bert, who was an executive at Beckett Paper and had died in 1972. Bert’s father and brother were both classical musicians and the family shared a love of good music.

The centerpiece of this year’s Tillmann Concert will be Felix Mendelsohnn’s “Concerto in D,” featuring pianist Sandra Rivers and violinist Timothy Schwartz.

Also on the bill is “Fiesta Mexicana,” by H. Owen Reed, a former subject of the symphony’s “American Masters Series,” presented as a way to reach out to and acknowledge Hamilton’s growing Hispanic population, Stanbery said.

“There been a lot of racial tension in the community in the past few years and so we’re trying to ease some of that,” he said.

 JournalNews staff photos by Nick Graham of the Hamilton Fairfield Symphony Orchestra in rehearsal for the 25th annual Tillmann Concert.