Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Springfield, MA
October 25, 2014
by Michael J. Moran
While no kings are depicted on this program, its title
accurately suggests the outsize emotional power of all four works. But its
theme might better be described by the old bridal adage “something old,
something new, something borrowed, something blue.”
Maestro Kevin Rhodes began the concert with “something
borrowed”: the chorale “It Is Enough” from Bach’s Cantata BWV 60, which was
quoted in the next work on the program, Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto. The
three-minute chorale was radiantly sung by 24 male and female members of the
Springfield Symphony Chorus, beautifully accompanied by a reduced SSO, a
performance they repeated after a 10-minute mini-lecture by the maestro that
was vintage Rhodes, informative and entertaining, as he illustrated at the
piano how the chorale fit into the concerto.
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| Caroline Goulding |
The audience seemed to appreciate this helpful introduction
to Berg’s final masterpiece, whose dissonant surrealism can still be a
challenge to modern ears. But not to the fingers of soloist Caroline Goulding,
whose technical virtuosity and interpretive maturity were remarkable for her
age (twenty-two). Dedicated “to the memory of an angel” (Manon Gropius, a close
friend of Berg who died of polio at age 18 in 1935), the concerto has a solemn
and lyrical beauty that the SSO players captured with delicacy and finesse.
Intermission was followed by something completely different
from Berg’s “something blue”: two symphonic poems written by Tchaikovsky but
inspired by Shakespeare: “The Tempest” (something new) and “Romeo and Juliet”
(something old). If the haunting opening and close, soaring love themes, and
thrilling climaxes of “The Tempest” could impress Nadezhda von Meck enough to
become Tchaikovsky’s patroness, it seems odd that the work is so rarely played
today. A more inspired account than this one by Rhodes and the SSO would be
hard to imagine.
And how better to follow it than with an equally riveting
performance of the more familiar “Romeo and Juliet"? Ideally paced to
maximize the contrast between the violent music of the warring Montagues and
Capulets and the famously ravishing love theme of their young progeny, it
brought a dramatic evening to a fittingly moving end.
