Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Hartford, CT
October 1–4, 2015
by Michael J. Moran
The HSO website calls the weekend of concerts opening their
72nd season as showcasing “music by composers who were inspired by diverse
musical traditions and genres to create visionary new works.” All three pieces
on the program fit this description in sometimes surprising ways.
It opened not with a traditional overture but with John
Adams’ “Shaker Loops,” a 25-minute score in four movements for strings, which
“shake” as they oscillate between notes and suggest the motion of Shakers
dancing at their worship services. In this early example of musical minimalism,
featuring repetition of slowly changing chords, the HSO strings shimmered with
a radiant glow in the slow “Hymning Slews” movement and throbbed with passion
in the thrilling finale, “A Final Shaking.”
Digital artist Christopher Gerson enhanced the often
spellbinding music with video projections of light over water and other outdoor
images through the course of a day.
 |
| Caroline Goulding |
Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto #1 is such a warhorse that it’s
hard to hear it as the “visionary new work” it may have been in 1868, but
22-year-old American soloist Caroline Goulding played it with a youthful
swagger and conviction that made it sound new again. Her tone was rich and
vibrant in the opening “Prelude,” soft and poignant in the lovely “Adagio,”
bold and heroic in the lively “Finale.” Called “precociously gifted” by
Gramophone magazine, this rising star should have a bright musical future.
A full-blooded account of Dvorak’s ninth, or “New World,”
symphony closed the concert after intermission. Inspired by African American
and Native American music that the composer heard while working in New York
during the 1890s, this “visionary new work” suggested a previously unexplored
direction for American composers. While Kuan’s tempos were mostly conventional,
she and the musicians brought fresh depth of feeling to the familiar “Largo”
and rare urgency to the last two movements.
Ever ready to surprise her audience, Kuan led the HSO in the
traditional season-opening “Star-Spangled Banner” at concert’s end, where it
risked no clash with Adams’ opening serenity and served as a rousing encore.
This is a maestra with potent imagination.
