Hartford Symphony, Hartford, CT
June 9-11, 2017
by Michael J. Moran
 |
| Adam Kerry Boyles |
No doubt inspired by the canny programming skills of
Hartford Symphony Orchestra Music Director Carolyn Kuan, Assistant Conductor
Adam Kerry Boyles assembled one of the most diverse and stimulating programs
ever presented by a local orchestra to close the HSO’s 73rd season on a high
note. It imaginatively paired two favorite masterpieces by Brahms and Ravel
with welcome HSO premieres of less familiar works by Haydn, Beethoven and
Vaughan Williams.
This graduation season concert aptly began with Brahms’
“Academic Festival Overture.” Incorporating four popular student drinking
songs, it was written in 1880 to acknowledge the composer’s receipt of an
honorary doctorate from the University of Breslau. Boyles led a warm and
invigorating performance of this jubilant score.
Conductor and a smaller orchestra were then joined by the
100 plus members of the Hartford Chorale for an equally joyous account of
Haydn’s 1799 setting of the Christian hymn of praise to God, “Te Deum.” The
chorus’s rendition of the Latin text was vibrant, enunciated with exemplary
clarity, and powerfully backed by Broyles and the HSO.
Russian-American pianist Alexander Moutouzkine next joined
the chorus and larger orchestra in Beethoven’s unwieldy but fascinating “Choral
Fantasy,” which begins with a five-minute passage for solo piano and introduces
five vocal soloists and the full chorus only in the last few measures of its
twenty-minute length. After a series of variations on an early Beethoven song,
the concluding text by poet Christoph Kuffner celebrates the power of music.
The ebullient piece was brilliantly performed by all forces under Broyles’
carefully balanced leadership.
A sensitive interpretation of Ravel’s colorful and
exquisitely crafted “Mother Goose Suite” followed intermission, and the program
closed with Vaughan Williams’ “Five Mystical Songs” for baritone, chorus and
orchestra. Based on four poems by George Herbert (“Easter” is divided over the
first two songs), the emotional heart of this radiant cycle is the central
poem, “Love Bade Me Welcome.” John Hancock was a dramatic soloist, while chorus
and orchestra were alternately forceful and ravishing.
The only flaw in this auspicious debut by Broyles was a lack
of printed or projected texts.
