Fresh Energy Sets Predictable Program Apart
The Spokane Symphony Orchestra Friday, April 7, at the Opera House
Programming originality turns up in the oddest places. Friday’s Spokane Symphony concert looked like the garden variety program - a sentimental overture, a grand symphonic masterpiece with a brilliant, popular concerto in between. Yet nothing on Friday’s program was quite typical.
The overture had never been played in Spokane and neither, apparently, had the concerto. The concluding symphony had not been heard here since 1978.
Conductor Fabio Mecheti introduced the audience to Antonio Carlos Gomes’ Overture to “Il Guarany.” Gomes’ music sounds a bit like warmed-over Verdi, but this overture’s quickly changing moods, tuneful themes and rich orchestration made it an interesting concert opener.
It is hard to believe that the Spokane Symphony has never in its 49-year history performed Camille Saint-Saens’ Violin Concerto No. 3, but the program booklet said that Friday’s performance was the first for the orchestra.
The symphony’s program notes did not provide either Saint-Saens or his concerto with a ringing endorsement. Annotator Richard Rodda quoted historian Martin Cooper’s characterization of Saint-Saens as “poor in distinctive qualities” and “small hearted” and cited a 19thcentury review stating that the composer “does not always have anything to say” in the concerto. Ouch!
Violin soloist Elmar Oliveira obviously believed none of that twaddle. His playing, if anything, overstated the boldness and exoticism of the concerto’s outer movements, at times sounding brusque to the point of ferocity. But his scintillating technique and robust tone made that approach eloquent and effective. Oliveira’s playing in slow movement, though, was a model of lyrical elegance with beautifully produced hushed sounds any lesser violinist might covet.
Oliveira’s technical powers were even more evident in his encore, Paganini’s Caprice No. 13, with its insinuating double stops and lightning-fast staccato string crossings.
Mechetti chose as Friday’s orchestral centerpiece Schubert’s Ninth Symphony, a masterpiece that is both beautiful and long. Mechetti and the orchestra extolled the work’s spaciousness and nobility without sacrificing its dancing lightness. Aside from some hesitant woodwind entrances in the scherzo, there was little evidence of the work’s exhausting difficulty.
Mechetti brought out many splendid details, none more effective than the glorious climax in the Andante. The steady accumulation of sound culminates abruptly in silence, followed by a yearning melody in the cellos that very nearly breaks your heart. Mechetti paced the mounting energy of Schubert’s jaunty exchanges among the woodwinds and the crisp, distant trumpet fanfares so carefully that Schubert’s grand silence opened like a chasm.
Moments like that turned a program that did not appear to be particularly original into something invigoratingly fresh.