Hartford Symphony, Hartford, CT
October 11–14, 2012
by Michael J. Moran
Leave it to the programming genius of Carolyn Kuan not only
to upend tradition by launching her second season as Music Director of the Hartford
Symphony Orchestra with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (the season closer at
Tanglewood every summer) but to make practical use of the same vocal forces to
introduce an unfamiliar work to local audiences which reflects her own Chinese
heritage.
The “Yellow River Cantata” was written in 1939 by Xian
Xinghai in the Chinese city of Yanan, partly as settings of poems by Guang
Weiran celebrating the river, and partly in defiance of the Japanese invasion
of China in the 1930s. Though Xian had studied in Paris with D’Indy and Dukas
for several years, the music sounds most inspired by Soviet socialist realism.
But its use of Chinese folk idioms and of several Chinese
traditional instruments makes for a colorful half-hour score which drew a
stirring performance from the orchestra, the Hartford Chorale, the Farmington
High School Chamber Singers, the Kang Hua Singers of Greater Hartford, and
three vocal soloists, of whom Chinese-born baritone Yunpeng Wang made the
strongest impression.
The account of Beethoven’s Ninth that followed intermission
was blazing and driven, in the tradition established by Arturo Toscanini. The
first movement was intense and relentless, and there was no easing off of
tension in the scherzo second movement, including a rapid-fire trio section.
The third movement, though taken at a flowing tempo, achieved a rapturous calm
before the high drama of the finale, in which the orchestra was joined by the
three choruses and four vocal soloists.
Wang was again the standout singer, but soprano Yahan Chen,
mezzo-soprano Melody Wilson, and tenor Laurence Broderick also acquitted them
well. The choruses did fine work in both pieces, singing with clarity,
precision, and enthusiasm, and blending well with each other and the soloists.
English translations of the texts were helpfully projected over the stage.
The focus of both works on global harmony among peoples
served not only as a grand opening statement for the HSO’s new season but as a
timely message in a divisive political season.
