Hartford Symphony, Hartford, CT
April 6–8, 2018
by Michael J. Moran
For the seventh “Masterworks series” program of the HSO’s
74th season, HSO Assistant Conductor Adam Kerry Boyles stepped in on short
notice for guest conductor Laura Jackson, who had been scheduled to lead these
concerts but cancelled due to illness. The program of four works by three
American composers remained unchanged.
It opened with a bracing rendition of Copland’s “Outdoor
Overture,” written in 1938 for the student orchestra at the High School of
Music and Art in New York City. In the composer’s own words, “the piece starts
in a large and grandiose manner,” introduces four major themes, two of them
march rhythms, until “at a climactic moment, all the themes are combined [and]
a brief coda ends the work on the grandiose note of the beginning.” Boyles and
the full HSO played it to the hilt.
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| Alessio Bax |
The first half concluded with a full-blooded account of
Gershwin’s 1925 “Concerto in F” for piano and orchestra, featuring soloist
Alessio Bax in his HSO debut. Born in Italy 40 years ago, Bax has lived in the
United States for over 20 years, clearly absorbing the American idiom of
Gershwin’s sound. From the jazzy Charleston-based opening Allegro, through the
blues-inflected central nocturne, to the “orgy of rhythms,” as the composer put
it, in the finale, Bax’s playing was nuanced and virtuosic, with enthusiastic
backing from Boyles and the ensemble.
The newest piece on the program in another HSO debut was
“Rainbow Body,” written in 2000 by Christopher Theofanidis and performed after
intermission. Based on a chant by the 12th century German Benedictine abbess
Hildegard von Bingen, which it quotes several times, the piece tries, as the
composer notes, “to capture a halo around this melody…by emphasizing the
lingering reverberations one might hear in an old cathedral.” The warm Belding
acoustic nicely conveyed this halo in a sensitive performance by Boyles and the
HSO.
The concert aptly closed with a suite from Copland’s ballet
“Billy the Kid” on which he interrupted work to write the “Outdoor Overture.”
Its colorful presentation under an animated Boyles brought the evening to a
crowd-pleasing close.
