Sublime
Storytelling from the Canton Symphony Orchestra
By
Tom Wachunas
The November 9
concert by the Canton Symphony Orchestra CSO) was a particularly eclectic
program of five works exploring the theme of storytelling, beginning with
Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of
Figaro. In the genre of opera buffa, there’s
hardly a more scintillating curtain raiser than this madcap orchestral frolic.
The fast-paced music is replete with crisply punctuated rhythms and many shifting
colors, and the ensemble played it impeccably.
Following this
invigorating romp into unfettered jollity, the musical temperament shifted
dramatically with Concerto Dei Fiori
(Concert of Flowers), a one-movement piece for violin and chamber orchestra
composed in 1996 by Sylvie Bodorová. In the course of her career spanning from
the late 1970s, she has become one of the most sought-after and performed
champions of contemporary Czech musical culture.
Concerto Dei Fiori is a piquant melding
of moods, at once somber and sweet, tumultuous and meditative. All of the work’s
thematic tensions were articulated here with mesmerizing panache in a sensitive
dialogue between the small ensemble and the featured soloist, CSO concertmaster
Cristian Zimmerman. His remarkably fluid playing was imbued with an emotive intensity
that very effectively evoked the music’s sensations of wandering and discovery,
of slowly ascending from brooding darkness to blossom in the promise of light. His
electrifying cadenza nearly midway through, pierced by savage dissonances, was
a grand unleashing that gave way to stratospheric high notes, finally ushering
in a stately hush as the ensemble quoted J.S. Bach’s Cantata No. 180, Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele : “Adorn
yourself, of beloved soul, leave the dark den of sins, come into the clear
light, begin to shine with glory…”
Following that
gorgeous moment of found serenity was a story of a different sort - Samuel
Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, for
soprano and small orchestra. Barber set this fascinating work - perhaps best
called a free-form operatic poem, or “word painting” - to text written by
American poet and novelist James Agee (1909-1955). The words form a distinctly
dreamlike remembrance of a sultry summer evening, presented from the
perspective of a child, and made all the more enchanting here thanks to the
rhapsodic intonations from soprano Hilerie Klein Rensi. Beyond the sheer
radiance of her actual singing, which was often inflected with a lilting,
conversational timbre, Rensi’s performance was suffused with a captivating
theatrical expressivity. She seemed to float effortlessly between wistful moments of wide-eyed childlike wonder and the
more bittersweet musings, implicit in the text, of an adult all too aware of
mortality and impending sorrow. Throughout, the ensemble invested Barber’s seductive
and haunting melodies with a crystalline, even magical
dimensionality.
The concert
ended, as it began, on a dazzlingly felicitous note, this time with Zoltán
Kodály’s Dances of Galánta. This lavishly orchestrated work is
a rambunctious Hungarian rondo with special attention given to the clarinet. The
orchestra rose to the moment with all the lush sonority and clarity we’ve come
to expect from this accomplished body of gifted artists. Yet interestingly
enough, it was the performance of the work preceding this enthralling climax
that remains in my mind as the most extraordinary musical encounter of the
evening – Aaron Copland’s Appalachian
Spring Suite.
Maestro Gerhardt
Zimmermann introduced this eminently familiar American classic - which I’ve
always heard played by large orchestras - with a humorous and touching
reminiscence about meeting, knowing, and savoring Aaron Copland. Then he faced
his ensemble, now pared down to a scant 13 pieces (as originally performed in
1944) and proceeded to essentially transcend mere familiarity. You’d think that
with such a small group of players, the scope and depth of Copland’s idyllic
vision would be somehow diminished. Instead, they simply proved that less can
in fact be more. ‘Tis the gift to be simple indeed. I’ve never heard this
iconic work performed with more genuine emotional sensitivity, more sweeping
lyrical elegance, than on this occasion. What was old had become new again.
Better than beautiful, it was sublime.
