Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Hartford, CT
November 2–4, 2018
by Michael J. Moran
To open the second “Masterworks series” program of the HSO’s
75th anniversary season, guest conductor Thomas Wilkins, Music Director of the
Omaha Symphony since 2005, selected Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s first
published work, his “Little Suite” for strings. Dating from 1888, when Nielsen
was 23 years old, its three short movements were expressively played by the HSO
string section under Wilkins’s subtle, restrained leadership.
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| HSO Horn Section |
The concert continued with the 1850 “Konzertstuck” (Concert
Piece) for the unlikely combination of four horns and orchestra by Robert
Schumann. The brash fanfare which opens the first of its three short movements
introduces a variety of technical challenges over the next 20 minutes for the
four soloists, in this case all members of the HSO horn section. Principal
Barbara Hill and her colleagues John Michael Adair, Hilary Ledebuhr, and Nick
Rubenstein made it a showpiece for their notoriously demanding instrument, and
they received spirited backing from Wilkins and the orchestra.
Intermission was followed by a dramatic account of the 1883
third symphony by Schumann’s protégé Johannes Brahms. The quietest of the composer’s
four symphonies, it was refreshing to hear the opening “Allegro con brio”
movement played with more vigor than usual, as Brahms wanted. But Wilkins’s
flexible approach also gave full play to the flowing languor of the “Andante”
second movement and the reflective melancholy of the “Poco allegretto” third
movement before the energetic “Allegro” finale subsides into a peaceful hushed
close. The conductor’s focused direction elicited sensitive and committed
playing from the ensemble.
The Saturday audience was so pleased with it that the
program closed with an encore, a blazing rendition of the closing “Furiant”
from the 1879 Czech Suite by Antonin Dvorak, a composer much admired and even
mentored by Brahms. Here Wilkins was more animated than he had been all
evening, and his warm reception suggested that his HSO debut this weekend
should not be his last Hartford appearance.
