Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Brahms

Hartford Symphony Orchestra
The Bushnell, Hartford
February 16, 2008
By Donna Bailey-Thompson

This Valentine-inspired program featured Ravel’s intricate orchestrations, Rachmaninoff’s scoring skills, and Brahms’ transformation of melancholia into musical majesty. The Hartford Symphony’s salute to romance provided beauty and bite, euphoria and sadness, the skill of a sensitive pianist, all under the baton of guest conductor Tania Miller.

Imagine Tania Miller growing up in Saskatchewan (pop. 1000) who at age 35 is in her fifth season as Music Director of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra. Maestra Miller won the audience’s admiration for her mature, definitive conducting skills; and for her warmth as an engaging young woman, she earned a piece of its heart.

Maurice Ravel’s "Le Tombeau de Couperin" is what impressionistic painting sounds like – shimmering, lush, vivacious, guarded, poignant, muted – particularly when the composer is roiling with emotional pain due to World War One, the deaths of six friends, the passing of his beloved mother, and the effects of brutality on French culture. Sergei Rachmaninoff’s "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" is a collection of variations on one particular theme composed by the legendary violinist Niccolio Paganini. It’s what the scratchings of an algebraist might resemble when trying one hypothesis after another in search of the ultimate equation. But a brainstorm directs the mathematician towards a radically different approach which brings forth an interim possibility of heavenly proportions. The piano artistry of guest soloist Anne-Marie McDermott, tempered by respect for the piece, thrilled the audience.

The Symphony No. 4 in E minor by Johannes Brahms, in four movements, was written while he was warding off depression. Sometimes the music brightens, almost as if he doesn’t dare to feel happy. Ah, the fullness of Brahms! Maestra Miller evoked the orchestra to step up their involvement with the music without compromising their discipline. The repetition of ta dum, ta dum, foretells that something big this way comes. Can it be forestalled? Maybe. No, sorry, it’s inevitable. And this great composition swelled to a majestic, controlled conclusion. The audience was pulled to its feet.

Hartford Symphony Orchestra

The Bushnell, Hartford
November 10
By Donna Bailey-Thompson

Exquisite – the one word description of the Masterworks’ program from the first note through the last of the Hartford Symphony’s performance under the baton of Director Edward Cumming. During the Concert Preview, Cumming stated, "This is not your grandfather’s program," referring to the 35-minute length of the opening piece followed by an intermission and then the sequence of the piano concerto and two musically enjoined pieces by different composers – "a program that stretches the orchestra and you." For the audience, a painless stretch.

"Petrouchka, a Ballet in Four Tableaux,"presented Stravinsky in all his glistering glory. The colorful energy of a fair was easy to visualize – the strolling crowds, a dancing bear – and then the fabled puppet himself, Petrouchka (Russian), Pierrot (French), Pinocchio (Italian), and Punch (English). He loves a ballerina; she’s infatuated with a Moor, and the Moor kills Petrouchka. Attending the Concert Preview netted musical insights, e.g., the "Petrouchka chord" – the use of two different keys at the same time (bitonality). While the first clarinet played the notes of the C major chord, the second clarinet played the same melody but in the F sharp major chord. The playing of Margreet Francis at the piano – uneven rhythms sharply delineated – was nothing short of "Wow!"

Following intermission, George Gershwin’s Concerto in F major was performed with technical aplomb by guest soloist Louise Bessette at the piano but who lacked the expressiveness – the musical soul – heard only minutes earlier in the playing by the HSO’s Margreet Francis. Consequently, the concerto’s passion was generated by the orchestra.

Pure bliss completed the concert beginning with Debussy’s Prelude to "The Afternoon of a Faun" which Maestro Cumming had described as "one of the most perfect pieces ever written" and in response to the opening notes of a poetic flute said, "Wherever that is, take me there!" Only a slight pause separated its ending with the beginning of Ravel’s "La Valse," a tightly crafted piece that echoed the not-so-innocent political dance leading to the First World War, its brutality exemplified by drums rumbling like distant thunder which built geometrically into the cacophony of senseless war represented by waltzing gone amok.

This evening was a triumph for the HSO.