‘Made in America’ gets stamp of approval
The Spokane Symphony put the “Made in America” label on Friday’s night’s Opera House concert. If every product that bore that label was as well-crafted as the performances heard Friday, we could all be proud.
Conductor Morihiko Nakahara, the symphony’s associate conductor, began the concert with the newest music, Christopher Rouse’s “Rapture,” in a way that caused the music to live up to its title.
The 12-minute work begins softly and slowly with sustained low strings, a bit of sparkle from the harp and distant rumbles from the bass drum. Rouse introduces the brighter colors with more and more instruments and the piece gathers steam. But at the end, massive surges of string and wind sounds sizzle with the bursts of a huge battery of percussion.
It is the mad exaltation of Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” gone even madder.
Pianist Norman Krieger joined the orchestra for George Gershwin’s “Concerto in F.”
Krieger knows this concerto so well, he can be playful with it, sometimes luxuriating in its sweetly bluesy improvisational sections, other times pushing the tempo in the finale’s rivet-gun repeated notes. It was almost alarming to see a soloist so clearly comfortable with such difficult music and daring to have so much fun with it.
Nakahara and the orchestra seemed to enjoy the partnership in ‘20s swing, too. Notable solos were heard from concertmaster Kelly Farris, flutist Bruce Bodden and from principal trumpet Larry Jess.
Sergei Rachmaninoff may seem to be an odd composer to find on a “Made in America” concert. But the very Russian Rachmaninoff wrote his “Symphonic Dances” on Long Island and gave its premiere to his favorite symphonic ensemble, the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was his last major work and was a great departure from the heavy Slavic romanticism of his earlier concertos and symphonies.
The composer had hoped the work would be turned into a ballet by his Long Island neighbor, and fellow Russian emigre, Mikhail Fokine. It was not to be. The great choreographer died before he and the composer could even discuss the completed work. But Nakahara and the orchestra brought the dancing energy to the work Rachmaninoff must have envisioned.
What struck me is how very much Rachmaninoff owes to Ravel in the work’s cleaner, leaner lines and even in the details such as the swirling patterns he wrote for pairs of woodwind instruments that seem straight out of Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloe.”
In his preconcert talk, Nakahara referred to the waltz of the middle movement as “a ghost waltz.”
The conductor did not mention Ravel’s equally spooky “La Valse,” but you could hear it as the dance spirits reflected a slightly out-of-focus Vienna.
What a pleasure to be reminded again how lucky Spokane is in having its orchestra in the hands of two excellent conductors, music director Eckart Preu and his associate Nakahara.