Springfield Symphony,
Springfield, MA
April 13, 2013
by Michael J. Moran
Two familiar headliners,
but only one familiar work, appeared at the sixth classical concert of the
current SSO season. In her welcoming remarks from the stage, SSO President Kris
Houghton noted that at least two of the three works on the program were “new
music” to many orchestra members. That may explain why they all sounded
especially fresh and bracing.
The evening got off to
an exuberant start with Gershwin’s familiar “An American in Paris,” which the
composer called “a rhapsodic ballet…to portray the impressions of an American
visitor as he strolls around the city.” Energetic leadership from Music
Director Kevin Rhodes drew vivid and committed playing from all sections of the
orchestra, which featured jazzy clarinets and saxophones and an enlarged
percussion section, including car horns.
The program continued
with an unfamiliar piece by an equally unfamiliar composer, the Symphony No. 4,
written in 1950, by Walter Piston. In a spoken introduction to the work, Rhodes
called it an “incredibly beautiful” example of the composer’s strong influence
on later generations of musicians whom he taught at Harvard. The orchestra
seemed to relish the variety of rhythms and moods in the symphony’s four short
movements, and the audience’s enthusiastic response suggested that Piston’s
music should be played more often.
Intermission was
followed by an unfamiliar composition by a familiar composer, Rachmaninoff’s
Piano Concerto No. 4, perhaps the least known of his four concertos but also
the most harmonically advanced.
Written in 1926, its lack of a clear tonal center made it sound newer
than Gershwin’s piece, which was written two years later. And heard after the
two American works, the Rachmaninoff even seemed to reflect some of the jazz
influence that was infiltrating classical music in the 1920's.
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