Hartford Symphony Orchestra
October 11–12, 2013
by Michael J. Moran
Carolyn Kuan opened her third season as Music Director of
the Hartford Symphony Orchestra with an imaginative program of three works that
featured two contrasting solo instruments.
The version of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor that
began the concert included not only the solo organ for which it was originally
written but the full orchestra in a transcription by Leopold Stokowski.
Organist Edward Clark and the brass and string players made the most of their
prominent roles in this dramatic account. The Bach was followed by an
unannounced but delightfully effervescent performance of the rousing Overture
to Smetana’s comic opera The Bartered Bride.
Like last year, Kuan included in this opening night program
not only a piece but also a performer reflecting her Chinese heritage. Wu Man
was the crowd-pleasing soloist in Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Pipa with String
Orchestra, written in 1997 for a festival celebrating the 80th birthday of the
Oregon-born composer, who died in 2003. The pipa is an ancient Chinese lute
with a short neck and four silk strings, and Ms. Wu was the soloist in that
1997 premiere.
The highlight of the half-hour-long concerto was the second
of its four movements, called “Bits and Pieces,” with sections like “Three
Sharing,” in which the pipa and principal cello and bass players struck the
wood on their instruments for some dazzling percussive effects. Ms. Wu plucked
her pipa with such obvious enjoyment and winning virtuosity that the
enthusiastic audience called her back for a lovely traditional Chinese encore
called “White Snow in Spring.”
A highly charged reading of Saint-Saens’ Symphony No. 3, the
“Organ Symphony,” followed intermission. Clark again played the Bushnell organ
with appropriate languor in the lush Poco Adagio second movement and majesty in
the maestoso finale. The full orchestra played all four movements with
excitement and precision.
A notable result of Maestra Kuan’s educational outreach
efforts to the local community was the participation in the Bach and Smetana
pieces by members of the Connecticut Youth Orchestra. Prepared by their Music
Director Daniel D’Addio, they blended seamlessly with the HSO.
