Table of Contents
May 16, 2009: Florida
Orchestra keeps an outsized Mahler piece in check
May 2,
2009: Young Canadian provides a
sensational interpretation of Shostakovich
Apr 19,
2009: Florida Orchestra oboe soloist
shines in concerto
Feb 21, 2009: Viennese music lifts us over economic
trouble
Feb 21, 2009: Florida Orchestra Transports Audience To
Vienna
Jan 25, 2009: From Russia With Flair
Jan 24,
2009: Pianist showcases Florida
Orchestra's Russian program in Tampa
Nov 30, 2008:
A Penchant For Percussion
Nov
29, 2008: Time for Three: Virtuosos
unleash violins and bass on Bach to bluegrass
Nov 22,
2008: Orchestra Delights In All-American
Sound
Nov 8, 2008: Visiting Holst's planets, all in good
time
Nov 8, 2008: Visiting Holst's planets, all in good
time
May 31, 2008: Florida Orchestra, with James Ehnes, closes its
season in spectacular style
May 30, 2008: Grammy winner Ehnes closes Florida Orchestra
season
May 18, 2008: Madcap touch just right for Tchaikovsky at Mahaffey
Theater
Apr 13, 2008: Zukerman Humble Yet
Captivating
Apr 12, 2008: Zukerman brings zest to
strings
Mar 29, 2008: Guitarist Is 1-Man String Section With
Orchestra
Mar 28, 2008: Florida Orchestra performs Berlioz with passion,
thunder
Mar 26, 2008: Jason Vieaux's got the world on a
six-string
Mar 16, 2008: Pianist Can 'Rach' The House
Mar
15, 2008: Russian pianist freshens
concerto
Mar 8, 2008: Delightful 'Petite Suite' a nice
surprise
Mar 6, 2008: Orchestra's principal horn returns as
soloist
Mar 1, 2008: Helps' symphony takes flight
Feb
29, 2008: Florida Orchestra Resurrects
Tampa-Born Symphony
Feb 9, 2008: Double bass comes out of the
shadows
Feb 9, 2008: Master Chorale Offers Convincing
'Carmina'
Jan 26, 2008: Orchestra mixes classic, modern for fulfilling
night
Jan 20, 2008: Performance inspired by the
spiritual
Jan 20, 2008: Orchestra Scales Summit Of Bruckner's
9th
Jan 12, 2008: 'Cirque' complements music
Jan 5,
2008: Sibelius soars but Mozart is
earthbound
Jan 5, 2008: Orchestra Has Night Of Symphonic
Delight
Jan 3, 2008: Conductor offers perspective from behind the
baton
Jan 2, 2008: Concerts Make Most Of Mozart
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: May 16, 2009
By: John
Fleming
Florida Orchestra keeps an outsized Mahler piece in check
TAMPA - Mahler was haunted by death, and that's what his Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection) is all about. And it's a 19th century romantic conception of death, full of pealing brass fanfares, pounding percussion and a large chorus.
In fact, it's similar in sound and fury - though with less singing - to Verdi's Requiem, which was the previous work the Florida Orchestra and the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay performed together this season.
Mahler's Second is a big deal, and the orchestra fielded all its musicians plus a few more under music director Stefan Sanderling Friday in Morsani Hall of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. The percussion section was expanded to include two sets of timpani. Still, the stage could have been even more crowded, considering that Mahler called for as many as 10 French horns and eight trumpets. The orchestra made do with five horns and three trumpets. (Extra musicians cost money, no small thing for orchestras these days.)
The Resurrection is an outsized work in length as well, but Sanderling's reading was positively brisk, clocking in at 85 minutes, with no intermission. (Leonard Bernstein dragged it out to 93 minutes in a 1987 recording.) Nor did he ask the orchestra to play with the ferocity you often hear in Mahler, but appeared to be going for a classical refinement at times.
Only in the second movement, which stands apart from the rest of the symphony with its lyrical, almost Viennese waltz style, did conductor and orchestra lose their way when the soft pizzicato section at the end seemed a bit random. But then the performance regained momentum in the glamorous third movement and the final two movements when voices join the orchestra.
The vocal soloists were mezzo- soprano Elizabeth Bishop and soprano Marie Plette, and Bishop in particular made a dramatic impression. Her song in the fourth movement was a perfect jewel, beautifully echoed in a solo by principal oboe Katherine Young. Bishop and Plette and the chorus sailed through the finale's tumultuous depiction of Judgment Day, redemption and resurrection in sensational fashion.
This weekend's program winds up the orchestra's masterworks season. It's also the last time the Master Chorale will have been prepared by artistic director Richard Zielinski, who is moving on to Oklahoma. As the group's energetic leader since 2001, he did a fine job and will be missed.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: May 2, 2009
By: John
Fleming
Young Canadian provides a sensational interpretation of Shostakovich
TAMPA - Karen Gomyo is not yet a huge star, nor would you necessarily expect her - a young Canadian violinist - to be a distinctive interpreter of Shostakovich. But I cannot imagine the Russian composer's Violin Concerto No. 1 being played any more sensationally than Gomyo did Friday night in Ferguson Hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.
From the keening beauty of the opening Nocturne through the wild dance of the second movement, the spiritual Passacaglia, the remarkable large-scale cadenza and the fiendishly difficult finale, this was a performance for the ages.
Despite her girlish appearance, Gomyo, 27, brought a commanding sense of authority and stage presence to the concerto. She had a good partner on the podium in music director Stefan Sanderling, who has long, deep experience in conducting Shostakovich.
Because Gomyo's playing was so mesmerizing, it wasn't until the second movement that the lack of trumpets and trombones in the instrumentation registered on me. This is very unusual for Shostakovich, and the woodwind playing was outstanding, as in the bassoon that joined in counterpoint with the soloist at times. As an encore, Gomyo dashed off a dazzling Bach Prelude.
Sanderling and the orchestra wasted an opportunity to spotlight a living composer by beginning the concert with The Fixed Desire of the Human Heart by Samuel Adler, a retired professor at the Eastman School of Music. The somber, mildly atonal piece was well crafted, but it didn't have much to say and drew a tepid response from the audience.
Brahms' Third Symphony can sometimes seem a bit reticent and uncertain, but Sanderling would have none of that. He led a headlong performance that slowed only for the lilting third-movement waltz.
o o o
Gomyo plays a famous violin, the 1703 Stradivarius known as "Ex Foulis." If you're curious about how she takes care of such a priceless instrument, see an interview with her on our new arts blog, Critics Circle, at blogs.tampabay.com/arts.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Apr 19, 2009
By: John
Fleming
Florida Orchestra oboe soloist shines in concerto
ST. PETERSBURG - Isn't it odd that the oboe, one of the most soloistic of symphony orchestra instruments, has so few concertos? Mozart and Richard Strauss composed oboe concertos, but even those aren't very well known.
Katherine Young, the fine principal oboe with the Florida Orchestra, did some evangelizing on behalf of her instrument Saturday night at Mahaffey Theater. She and the orchestra, with Stefan Sanderling conducting, performed Martinu's Oboe Concerto, which came late in the Czech composer's life and premiered in 1956. Though not a long piece, it showed off the oboe to terrific advantage in Young's hands, as she ranged from traditionally mournful, exotic passages to funky, rapid playing in the third movement.
The oboe is a cantankerous instrument that has been known to drive players mad. But Young seems born to the double reed, demonstrating amazing security of pitch in a leap into the highest register in the second movement. There was delicious interplay between her and pianist Yukiko Sekino, who had a prominent part.
The first half of the program had a Czech flavor, opening with Smetana's picturesque hymn to the river Vltava as it flows through the countryside.
The rest of the evening was taken up by Schumann's Symphony No. 2. I always find Schumann symphonies fun to analyze, because they are, of course, brilliant, but unlike other masterpieces by the likes of Beethoven and Brahms, they are not perfect. They are fascinating because of their flaws, such as Schumann's clumsy orchestration. You can sit all the way through the Second Symphony's first movement, for example, without hearing much of anything from the woodwinds, though they are playing most of the time.
Schumann had trouble translating his musical ideas from the piano, where he did his composing, to full orchestra, but it doesn't matter, because the ideas are so exciting that they overcome his lack of craft. The Second Symphony includes some of his greatest ideas, like the virtuosic violin play that begins the second movement and the breathtaking Adagio of the third movement.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Feb 21, 2009
By: John
Fleming
Viennese music lifts us over economic trouble
TAMPA - Classical music will always have Vienna, home of the great composers. Two of the greatest supply the music for this weekend's concerts by the Florida Orchestra. One of them, Mozart, was never quite accepted by his adopted city, despite his genius, while the other composer, Johann Strauss Jr., wrote waltzes, marches and polkas that epitomized Viennese high society.
Klauspeter Seibel, a veteran German maestro, led the orchestra Friday at Ferguson Hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Mozart occupied the first half of the evening, starting with a pleasant but somnolent reading of his Symphony No. 35 (Haffner), which Seibel conducted without a score. Things picked up in the final movement that Mozart said should "go as fast as possible."
The artistic highlight of the program was Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17, with soloist Markus Groh, a German who played a Prokofiev concerto with the orchestra five years ago. Groh is a brilliant technician, but where he was most impressive was in the second movement that requires as much expressiveness and delicacy of touch as bravura playing. His performance of the cadenza was especially good as he paused moodily in the middle of a phrase - yes, it was kind of showy but effective nonetheless - before diving back into the music.
Mozart's fondness for the bassoon is on display in prominent passages in the symphony and concerto, and principal Anthony Georgeson acquitted himself well.
The stock market plunged again on Friday, but the orchestra had an answer to the deepening recession: the fun, unabashedly schmaltzy music of Vienna's chief waltz manufacturer, milked for all its worth by Seibel, who provided play-by-play commentary between numbers.
Lost most of your savings in the market over the past year or two? No worries, let the irresistible melody of On the Beautiful Blue Danube sweep your cares away.
The whole second half of the concert was devoted to music of Strauss, favorites like the Gypsy Baron Overture, Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, the Persian March and other jaunty little tone poems to the Austro- Hungarian empire.
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: Feb 21, 2009
By:
Buddy Jaudon
Florida Orchestra Transports Audience To Vienna
TAMPA - Half Mozart. Half Strauss. All Vienna.
On Friday night, The Florida Orchestra, under the baton of guest conductor Klauspeter Seibel, played a program which featured music by these two composers, who made their home in the Austrian capital a century apart.
The evening began with Mozart's "Symphony No. 35, Haffner." This work began its life as a serenade, and its frothy nature shows it. Conductor Seibel, who performed the piece with no sheet music before him, kept the proper amount of air in the proceedings, and the orchestra played with just the right balance of grace and humor.
The trio section of the minuet was especially fine, and the fourth movement was lightning quick, honoring Mozart's wishes that it be played as fast as possible.
Pianist Markus Groh joined Seibel and the orchestra for Mozart's "Piano Concerto No. 17." Groh's reading of the work was notable for its dramatic approach. He made use more than once of somewhat pregnant pauses before attacking a phrase.
In all it was a finely tuned performance by pianist and orchestra, with Groh shining in the first movement cadenza, and the orchestra's woodwinds playing with great precision throughout.
The second half of the program was made up of three somewhat longer pieces by Johann Strauss Jr., interspersed with some of his brief confections.
Seibel spoke to the audience between pieces, giving some background and praising the orchestra. This created a more relaxed atmosphere than is common at orchestra concerts in the U.S., but which audiences in England and Europe would certainly recognize. It wasn't exactly last night at the Proms, but it was light enough.
Though Strauss wanted to write serious operas, Seibel said at one point, "always there came a polka," and it was the polkas which provided the most flavor. "On the Beautiful Blue Danube" was blue enough, and the "Gypsy Baron Overture" fiery enough. But the "Thunder and Lightning Polka" made the evening.
As Seibel noted, this orchestra understands this music well.
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: Jan 25, 2009
By:
Buddy Jaudon
From Russia With Flair
TAMPA - Russian giants were at work in local concert halls this weekend.
On Friday night Stefan Sanderling and The Florida Orchestra performed a concert of works, both familiar and less so, by Russian composers at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.
The less familiar came first, with a suite of music from Nikolai Rimsky- Korsakov's opera "The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya." This work should be better known as it is both tuneful and dramatic, with a proper Russian apotheosis worthy of Tchaikovsky at the end.
The playing was sharp throughout, with the strings providing a fine hushed atmosphere at the opening, and the winds providing exceptional moments in each section.
Next up was the "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" by Rachmaninoff. This work's familiarity never dulls its impact, and the performance by pianist Peter Rösel, while a bit less flamboyant than some, still brought loud cheers from the audience.
Sanderling's forces played the quiet foil to Rösel, and took up the full-throated mantle on their own with equal success.
Rösel handled the more rigorous of the 24 variations deftly, and infused the amazing 18th variation with all the longing it requires. He also provided an encore, something not at all par for the course any more.
The second half of the program was given over to the "Pictures at an Exhibition" of Modeste Mussorgsky. This is usually performed in an orchestration by Maurice Ravel, but in this case those duties were provided by Russian pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy.
The orchestral colors are certainly darker in many places than those of Ravel, and the basses did a fine job, providing much of the additional flavor. The percussion also got an exceptional workout in the final "Gate of Kiev" portion, with gongs crashing and chimes clanging. The brass playing also was excellent, which is a must for this version as much as Ravel's.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Jan 24, 2009
By: John
Fleming
Pianist showcases Florida Orchestra's Russian program in Tampa
TAMPA - It was a night of famously glorious musical climaxes in the Florida Orchestra's all-Russian program Friday. First, there was Rachmaninoff's greatest hit, the swoony 18th variation of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the irresistible melody that blossoms forth first in the solo piano, then in the strings like a miraculous flower after a hard Russian winter. Second was another of the signature moments of orchestral music, the sonic splendor of The Great Gate of Kiev, the concluding movement of Mussorgsky's walk through a gallery, Pictures at an Exhibition.
The star of the concert, in Ferguson Hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, was German pianist Peter Rosel, the soloist in Rachmaninoff's set of variations on a Paganini caprice.
Although he is not actually that big, Rosel is one of those virtuosos who seems to engulf the piano, commanding Rachmaninoff's incredible passagework with ease. I was as struck by the simplicity of his playing - soft, probing notes that had a lovely expressiveness - as by the amazing ornamentation that he brought to some of the most rapid runs. And of course the big tune was to die for.
There were pitch and balance problems in the opening variation and theme, but they were quickly resolved by conductor Stefan Sanderling. The orchestra playing had an edgy, rambunctious quality that I liked as a contrast to the romantic sweep of the piano.
The audience rewarded Rosel with a huge ovation, and he responded with an encore. It was more Rachmaninoff, one of his Moments Musicaux.
The concert opened with a suite from Rimsky-Korsakov's most ambitious opera (he wrote 16), The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya. Much of the music was straight out of Wagner, full of murmuring, layered strings beneath a haunting oboe, played by principal Katherine Young.
Pictures at an Exhibition occupied the second half of the program, but it wasn't the familiar Ravel orchestration of Mussorgsky's work for piano. Instead, it was the orchestration by pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, who has said he wanted a heavier, more Slavic, not so French sound. And it was all that and more, with a darker feel than the Ravel version, but it was also louder and less nuanced. The big brass passages tended to blare and flatten out in acoustically challenged Ferguson.
Source: The Tampa Tribune
Published: Nov
30, 2008
By: Kathy Greenberg
A Penchant For Percussion
John Shaw's penchant for variety will be put to the test Dec. 12 through 14 for The Florida Orchestra's concert "Haydn, Brahms & John Shaw." The orchestra's principal percussionist will perform the concerto "Veni, veni, Emmanuel" by Scottish composer James MacMillan.
With about two dozen instruments at his fingertips during the 25-minute performance, Shaw has his work cut out for him.
"There's something about playing a lot of different things in percussion that I find intriguing," Shaw said. "I play them the instruments in sections. There's a whole bit of time in between where I have to get from one station to another while the orchestra is still playing. I have to learn the silences and know when to come back in again. It is challenging."
"Veni, veni, Emmanuel" is based on material from the 15th century French carol "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." MacMillan wrote the Advent-inspired piece specifically for Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and it premiered in London in 1992.
Through rhythmical heartbeat motifs, the work explores the different sonorities of various percussion instruments. Shaw will play the marimba, which he described as "a cousin to the xylophone but lower in pitch and having more resonance." He'll also perform with chimes that recollect church bells, Thai nipple gongs (named so because of the distinctive raised centers), Javanese gongs, wood temple blocks that impart a Southeast Asian sound, bongos and a bass drum, among others.
Not surprisingly, accommodating so many instruments in one locale poses another challenge for Shaw.
"I don't have enough room in my house to set everything up. I practice gongs and blocks at home, marimba onstage in between rehearsals or I'm over at St. Pete College in the band room," Shaw said.
Raised in Milton, Shaw started taking piano lessons when he was 7. On occasion, his teacher would add the marimba, which sparked his interest in percussion.
In 1992, he joined The Florida Orchestra, where his wife, Anna Kate Mackle, is the principal harpist. He also teaches music at St. Petersburg College and is a member of the seven- member steel drum band Tampa Bay Steel Orchestra. Shaw's solo performance will highlight the qualities that a drum, cymbal, chime or block can lend to a musical composition - what he called "a splash of color or sparkle."
In addition to Shaw's performance, the orchestra's December program includes a Progress Energy Masterworks concert featuring Haydn's Divertimento in B-flat Major and Symphony No. 103, Drum Roll, plus Brahms' Variation on a Theme of Joseph Haydn.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Nov 29, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Time for Three: Virtuosos unleash violins and bass on Bach to bluegrass
TAMPA - Anyone who thinks classical musicians are stodgy should hear Time for Three, the guest artists this weekend in pops concerts by the Florida Orchestra. It's a youthful string trio made up of violinists Zach De Pue and Nick Kendall and double bassist Ranaan Meyer, who got together as students at Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and developed a mix of styles incorporating everything from Bach to bluegrass. It is a blast to hear virtuosos like them kick out the jams.
The group had a quick turnaround this week, playing Thursday night in Waterloo, Ontario, then coming here for Friday's concert at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Ferguson Hall. But that didn't faze the threesome as they launched into a haunting Shenandoah that eventually segued into the down-and- dirty Philly Phunk, driven by Meyer's forceful, jazzy bass.
With Richard Kaufman conducting, the orchestra meshed well with Time for Three, especially on a sensational run through Leroy Anderson's Fiddle- Faddle. The orchestra on its own played the Sigmund Romberg Celebration, a snappy medley of tunes by the early 20th century composer of Broadway operettas, arranged by Thomas Worrall.
Time for Three's performance of American Suite, composed by Meyer with orchestration by John B. Hedges, had the feel of a classic, from its opening movement based on a European folk dance to the finale, a fancy-fiddling homage to Florida's most famous train, the Orange Blossom Special.
Time for Three's closest forerunner in the crossover field is probably the combination of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, double bassist Edgar Meyer (no relation to Ranaan Meyer) and violinist Mark O'Connor, whose album Appalachia Waltz was a bestseller. I wouldn't be surprised if these guys from Philadelphia have the same kind of success.
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: Nov 22, 2008
By: Kurt
Loft
Orchestra Delights In All-American Sound
TAMPA - When The Florida Orchestra's season comes to a close in six months and we look back on those stick-to-the- ribs highlights, this weekend's program will stand out as a keeper.
The all-American fare seems harmless enough on paper, but seeing and hearing John Corigliano's Piano Concerto unfold - or does it explode? - up close and personal is worth more than the price of admission.
In fact, the folks attending "Phantom of the Opera" next door at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center missed the real action Friday night, because soloist William Wolfram didn't just convince most of his Ferguson Hall audience, he conquered them.
Oh, sure, this was a so- called "modern" work, with some atonal dissonance sprinkled over stark octaves and irregular rhythms - guaranteed to rankle traditionalists. But Corigliano also wrote an old- fashioned modern concerto, one that grabs the emotions while impressing with its steely virtuosity.
A big man with power to spare, Wolfram attacked his half-ton Steinway early on, capturing the frenetic essence of the first movement's duo cadenzas before cradling in his hands moments of quiet lyricism.
Composed in 1967, the concerto is a rollicking showpiece: dramatic, theatrical, over-the-top and prickly enough to keep listeners guessing.
Wolfram and the orchestra molded its four movements with assurance under the baton of guest conductor Edwin Outwater, and the team did a nice job of balancing savagery and elegance throughout.
Samuel Barber's "Second Essay" opened the night, a pleasant diversion from his ubiquitous "Adagio for Strings" and a piece that grows - with impressive weight - out of three simple themes. After the woodwinds juggled the melodies as a fugue, the entire ensemble wove its textures into a formidable climax.
Outwater devoted the second half to that watershed of American music, Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring," played with effortless transparency albeit some unpolished violins at the onset.
The musicians created a landscape of spacious and agreeable harmonies, delicate suspensions, spare textures and a fine sense for light and shade - especially in the famed "Shaker Hymn." Animating every detail at the podium, Outwater seemed not so much to be conducting the piece as riding a horse.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Nov 8, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Visiting Holst's planets, all in good time
ST. PETERSBURG - The Planets is the sort of piece where a stopwatch could come in handy to be ready for the big moments. Everyone has a favorite moment in Holst's tone poem, whether they know it or not. Even listeners hearing the work for the first time - and it is a great introduction to orchestral music - recognize the themes. Film composers from John Williams on down borrow from it.
The movement that Holst himself liked best was Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age, and under Stefan Sanderling on Friday night, the Florida Orchestra reached that planet 27 minutes, 50 seconds into the piece. The gentle, ominous music was worth the wait, featuring four flutes, harp duet and chimes.
The most familiar movement is Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity (19 minutes, 37 seconds in), with its irresistible tunes, including one that Holst later turned into a patriotic hymn.
Sanderling opened the program with a pair of dreamy Debussy works: Prelude a L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune and two of the three movements of Nocturnes. It was a good night for wind play, including acting principal flute Clay Ellerbroek in the solo that opens Faune; English horn Andrea Overturf's haunting solo in Nuages of Nocturnes; and principal oboe Katherine Young throughout.
Holst completed his interstellar opus in 1917, long before Pluto was first sighted in 1930. The final movement, Neptune, the Mystic, fades away to nothing, with celestial vocalizing by women of the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay. A few years ago British composer Colin Matthews wrote an "appendix" called Pluto, the Renewer. It would have been interesting to hear that.
And why wasn't the third Nocturne performed? Sirenes features women's voices and was the inspiration for Holst's use of them in The Planets.
Friday's concert was played for a modest turnout at Mahaffey Theater, where the program will be repeated tonight for the regular St. Petersburg subscription audience. Normally, the orchestra would have given its first of three performances for Tampa subscribers at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, but the preferred venue there, Morsani Hall, is occupied this month by The Phantom of the Opera.
So, given the lack of an acceptable venue at TBPAC (Ferguson Hall is too confined acoustically for a sonic showpiece like The Planets) the orchestra gambled that Tampa subscribers would travel over the bay to hear a popular work, and a lot of them did. But there weren't enough other ticket buyers in these hard economic times for the arts.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Nov 8, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Visiting Holst's planets, all in good time
ST. PETERSBURG - The Planets is the sort of piece where a stopwatch could come in handy to be ready for the big moments. Everyone has a favorite moment in Holst's tone poem, whether they know it or not. Even listeners hearing the work for the first time - and it is a great introduction to orchestral music - recognize the themes. Film composers from John Williams on down borrow from it.
The movement that Holst himself liked best was Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age, and under Stefan Sanderling on Friday night, the Florida Orchestra reached that planet 27 minutes, 50 seconds into the piece. The gentle, ominous music was worth the wait, featuring four flutes, harp duet and chimes.
The most familiar movement is Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity (19 minutes, 37 seconds in), with its irresistible tunes, including one that Holst later turned into a patriotic hymn.
Sanderling opened the program with a pair of dreamy Debussy works: Prelude a L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune and two of the three movements of Nocturnes. It was a good night for wind play, including acting principal flute Clay Ellerbroek in the solo that opens Faune; English horn Andrea Overturf's haunting solo in Nuages of Nocturnes; and principal oboe Katherine Young throughout.
Holst completed his interstellar opus in 1917, long before Pluto was first sighted in 1930. The final movement, Neptune, the Mystic, fades away to nothing, with celestial vocalizing by women of the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay. A few years ago British composer Colin Matthews wrote an "appendix" called Pluto, the Renewer. It would have been interesting to hear that.
And why wasn't the third Nocturne performed? Sirenes features women's voices and was the inspiration for Holst's use of them in The Planets.
Friday's concert was played for a modest turnout at Mahaffey Theater, where the program will be repeated tonight for the regular St. Petersburg subscription audience. Normally, the orchestra would have given its first of three performances for Tampa subscribers at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, but the preferred venue there, Morsani Hall, is occupied this month by The Phantom of the Opera.
So, given the lack of an acceptable venue at TBPAC (Ferguson Hall is too confined acoustically for a sonic showpiece like The Planets) the orchestra gambled that Tampa subscribers would travel over the bay to hear a popular work, and a lot of them did. But there weren't enough other ticket buyers in these hard economic times for the arts.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: May 31, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Florida Orchestra, with James Ehnes, closes its season in spectacular style
CLEARWATER - The Florida Orchestra saved one of its best programs for last. With James Ehnes as the soloist in the Beethoven Violin Concerto and music director Stefan Sanderling leading the Brahms Symphony No. 1, the orchestra wound up the season on a high note Thursday night at Ruth Eckerd Hall. The program will be repeated tonight at the Mahaffey Theater.
Ehnes, a prolific recording artist (with more than 20 CDs on his resume), seems to have the world on a string - four strings, actually, the strings of his 1715 Stradivarius. With his clean- cut, boyish looks and formal bearing, he is the very picture of the 21st century virtuoso as violin nerd. But the mild-mannered appearance can be deceiving.
Along with his sweet, singing tone and unerring intonation in high passages, Ehnes mined a rich vein of passion in the marathon first movement, suggesting a tumult beneath the elegant surface. The meditative atmosphere he achieved in the delicately scored middle movement was mesmerizing.
The Beethoven concerto is remarkably flexible in terms of tempos. Performances are getting longer. I have four recordings of the work, and versions by oldtimers Jascha Heifetz and Nathan Milstein clock in around 38 minutes, while contemporary soloists Itzhak Perlman and Joshua Bell slow it down a lot. Ehnes stretches the work out as much as anyone, coming in around 44 minutes on Thursday.
The choice of cadenzas accounts for some differences in timing. Beethoven left no cadenzas, and many have been written to fill the void. Ehnes played the Fritz Kreisler cadenzas. There was a special sense of urgency to his rapid, skittery scales in the third movement's cadenza.
Ehnes, brought back for repeated bows by the enthusiastic audience, played an encore. "Since we have Beethoven and Brahms, I think we should also have some Bach," he said, launching into the lively prelude of J.S. Bach's Partita No. 3.
The edge-of-the-seat intensity that Sanderling brought to the First Symphony's tragic opening movement set the stage for a brilliantly sculpted performance. Brahms was the great craftsman, and all his deft handiwork, such as the brass transition into the big tune of the fourth movement, was on fine display.
The Beethoven concerto and Brahms symphony provided plenty of moments for principals in the orchestra to shine. Both works begin with passages for timpani, laid down with the steadiness of a heartbeat by John Bannon. The expressive oboe playing of Katherine Young was a highlight of the Brahms.
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: May 30, 2008
By: Kurt
Loft
Grammy winner Ehnes closes Florida Orchestra season
CLEARWATER - Herculean struggles unfold this week as The Florida Orchestra wraps up its 40th season by molding together two of music's more potent creations.
There's something to be said for brazen classics, and Thursday night the musicians boldly paired masterpieces by Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms on the same stage. No one questions how orchestras need to present works of our own time, but who can resist such a compelling combo of heavyweights?
The night belonged to the Canadian virtuoso James Ehnes, a Bradenton resident who last appeared with the orchestra five years ago and spun rapture with Sibelius. This time around he tackled Beethoven's big fiddle concerto, crafting a sublime dialogue between his instrument and the orchestra.
Teaming up with music director Stefan Sanderling at Ruth Eckerd Hall, Ehnes offered a performance that began as a workman-like essay and evolved into a thing of beauty.
Unlike some concertos that feature seamless streams of melody, the Beethoven is more a patchwork of fragments and arpeggios. The challenge is to make them all flow like oil, and Ehnes was masterful in the first- movement cadenza, a tour-de-force of tremolos, double stops and scale runs that nearly pulled his violin out of tune. As the movement came to a close, Ehnes spent a good three or four minutes retuning his 293-year-old Stradivarius.
After a sweetly lyrical larghetto, Ehnes revved up the tempo and excitement with a rousing rondo that brought the audience on its feet. Ehnes came back on stage for a much- deserved encore: a scintillating rendition of the Preludio from Bach's Third Violin Partita.
If Brahms feared walking in the footsteps of his predecessor, his First Symphony shows not a note of trepidation, and it sounded warm and confident under Sanderling's controlled hand. From the ominous timpani strokes that open the work to the famed "quote" from Beethoven's Ninth in the finale, the musicians played with spirit and nuance, lighting all four movements with a rich spectrum of shades and colors.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: May 18, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Madcap touch just right for Tchaikovsky at Mahaffey Theater
ST. PETERSBURG - There's something almost comical about how hard it is to play Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2. Perhaps that's why pianist Stephen Hough performed it while wearing emerald-green shoes, a flamboyant, madcap touch of showmanship that seemed exactly right as he plunged into the work. He was stoutly supported in his daunting task by music director Stefan Sanderling and the Florida Orchestra Saturday night at Mahaffey Theater.
Although Hough is one of the greatest pianists in the world, the Tchaikovsky Second Piano Concerto would test even the most virtuosic of virtuosos. Yet the ease with which he navigated its jaw-droppingly rapid runs was nothing short of amazing, as in the two huge cadenzas of the first movement. Part of the listening enjoyment came in the unfamiliarity of the music, compared to the First Piano Concerto, the most popular Tchaikovsky concerto of all. No 2. is mainly known for its excessive length (about 45 minutes) and its use by choreographer George Balanchine as the score for his Ballet Imperial.
Oddly, from a structural standpoint, the second movement is like a triple concerto. Hough rested for long stretches as concertmaster Jeffrey Multer and principal cello James Connors played solos, then all three joined together in the wistful, lovely melody, classic Tchaikovsky. The delightful finale was full of dance themes, reminiscent of the Nutcracker and Swan Lake, and the orchestra's playing fully matched the brilliance of Hough.
Shostakovich's Festive Overture got Saturday's program off to a lively start under guest conductor Mei-Ann Chen, the 2007 Taki Concordia Conducting Fellow, an award established by Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, to support promising women conductors. Chen, born in Taiwan, is assistant conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and she spent several days here studying with Sanderling during orchestra rehearsals.
Chen has an alert manner on the podium and is economical in her gestures, but she's also plenty passionate when the music takes flight. The orchestra really played well for her in Shostakovich's bright, brassy bauble of a showpiece. She is an exciting young talent to keep an eye on.
Sanderling had his shining hour in the Firebird Suite (1945 version), shaping a dreamy performance that brought out the surprising details of Stravinsky's orchestration, such as the weird string glissandos that introduce the evil King Kaschei's magic garden at night.
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: Apr 13, 2008
By: Kurt
Loft
Zukerman Humble Yet Captivating
ST. PETERSBURG - Pinchas Zukerman, the Israel-born violin virtuoso and conductor, will never be accused of showing off in front of an orchestra. At his best, he becomes just another member of the band.
That's a good thing at a time when too many superstar performers play the ego game, wrestling the notes from the musicians onstage, not to mention the clenched fist of a long-gone composer.
Zukerman played the servant Saturday night at Mahaffey Theater, appearing in the first of three performances as a guest of The Florida Orchestra. For all his acclaim and accolades, the 59-year-old musician's reserved style and reverence for the score embraces a dignified, old-school view of performing that many listeners cherish.
This was evident in the initial notes of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3, the first in a set of five built more on profundity than perfume. Zukerman, dressed all in black, created a ripe, resilient and joyful sound on his 266-year-old Guarnerius instrument, giving the opening allegro an appealing sheen. During tutti passages, Zukerman turned and urged his players on with subtle movements of his bow.
In the short cadenza, Zukerman bowed his head in concentration as he feverishly worked bow against strings.
The violinists around him listened intently with expressions that seemed to say, "I wish I could play like that!"
The tender adagio flowed like oil, with flutes replacing oboes to alter the coloring, and the soloist's violin lines sounded downright operatic. The gavotte and folk song of the finale rode the momentum of a spirited tempo and danced off the stage.
The evening opened with Elgar's "Serenade for Strings," a work with no surprises other than an amiable smile that reflects the composer's new marriage at the time. The all-string orchestra created a warm blanket of sound from the start, and Zukerman's lithe baton technique kept the musicians loose but integrated throughout.
The larghetto was especially poignant, its sweet melodies and plush harmonies reminiscent of a page out of Tchaikovsky. At the end, the conductor encouraged concertmaster Jeffrey Multer to stand and take a bow.
The group devoted the second half to Schubert's Symphony No. 5, a quintessential work of the early romantic period that pays homage to Mozart. Zukerman and the reduced orchestra - no timpani or trumpets - offered a performance as crisp as it was transparent, and drove home the menuetto with military precision.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Apr 12, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Zukerman brings zest to strings
ST. PETERSBURG - The Florida Orchestra strings obviously enjoy playing with Pinchas Zukerman, the guest conductor and violin soloist on Saturday night at Mahaffey Theater. With Zukerman in front of them, the string players seem to have more bravado, more gallantry than they do under the baton of conductors who don't happen to be violin superstars.
Zukerman, making his second appearance with the orchestra since leading an all-Beethoven concert in 2005, knows how to program to his strength. Saturday's agenda included Elgar's Serenade for Strings, Schubert's Fifth Symphony and the Mozart G-Major Violin Concerto, featuring Zukerman as soloist. These are all works that show off the strings, with only a smattering of winds and no brass or percussion in the reduced orchestra.
With his handsome profile and bushy crop of silver hair, Zukerman brings some glamor to the orchestra. (Remember, this is a man who was once married to the movie star Tuesday Weld.) He's part of that long line of violin virtuosos from Paganini on down who mesmerize audiences with their sparkling technique and presence - not to mention the opulent sound of Zukerman's priceless Guarneri violin.
The concerto was a joy to hear in his hands, the perfect mix of youthful freshness (Mozart, a fine violinist himself, was 19 when he wrote it in Salzburg in 1775) and effortless technical command. There was a singing quality to Zukerman's playing of the long melodic lines of the melancholy Adagio, with unerring intonation in even the most dauntingly exposed passages.
Zukerman got the orchestra started in the Mozart by conducting with his back to the audience before turning around to address the solo part. From then on, communication between violinist-conductor and orchestra was subtle, with a nod of the head here, a flick of the bow there during a rest for the soloist. The ensemble held together beautifully all the way through.
The Schubert was one of his little symphonies, a 27-minute gem full of seamless, flowing melodies, performed with sublime restraint, more in the style of Mozart than Beethoven. Opening the evening was the Elgar Serenade, whose slow movement Zukerman milked for every last bit of emotion.
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: Mar 29, 2008
By: Kurt
Loft
Guitarist Is 1-Man String Section With Orchestra
TAMPA - Andres Segovia once described the classical guitar as an orchestra seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Friday night at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Jason Vieaux gave it plenty of focus.
In his debut with The Florida Orchestra, the 34-year-old virtuoso offered a fresh take on a seldom-heard gem of the repertoire, the Guitar Concerto of the Brazilian master Heitor Villa-Lobos.
Joined by Madrid-born guest conductor Pedro Halffter at the podium, Vieaux showed why he is among the most talented guitarists of his generation, a player whose effortless technique and fluidity gave the concerto a singing voice.
The guitar is a paradoxical concert instrument. Despite its pop appeal since the 1950s - and its polyphonic features - it has been slow to evolve alongside the orchestra, with only three or four works played on a regular basis.
Vieaux created a miniature sound world on six strings, capturing the rhythmic vitality of the outer movements and the rhapsodic mood of the andantino. As Vieaux deftly made his way through the cadenza, the musicians around him leaned forward, admiring his dexterity and purity of tone.
The evening opened with the Interlude and Dance from Manuel de Falla's flawed opera, "La Vida Breve" ("The Short Life"), Halffter urging on the orchestra with a concise, physical conducting style that brought out the music's simmering Spanish moods.
Hector Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique" dominated the second half, a pivotal work of musical romanticism that depicts an artist, high on opium, in despair over a hopeless love. Berlioz connects its five sections with a recurring motif called the idee fixe, which the orchestra tossed around in different instrumental guises.
A highlight was the swaggering waltz of "The Ball," Katherine Young's eloquent oboe solo in the "Scene in the Country," and the pounding kettledrums in the "March to the Scaffold." Although the orchestra offered moments of demonic intensity, the strings lacked the energy - and presence - to make this a truly fantastic symphony.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Mar 28, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Florida Orchestra performs Berlioz with passion, thunder
TAMPA - Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique was the main attraction of Friday's Florida Orchestra concert, led by guest conductor Pedro Halffter at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Berlioz took up music where Beethoven left off with the magnum opus of his youth (the Frenchman was just 27 when he composed it in 1830), the first and still the greatest purely romantic symphony.
Before getting to Berlioz, there were a couple of interesting works on the agenda, beginning with the Interlude and Dance from De Falla's opera La Vida Breve. It's quintessentially Spanish music, with lots of rhythmic flair, and Halffter, a native of Madrid, was in his element.
Jason Vieaux was the fine soloist in Villa-Lobos' Guitar Concerto, a dreamy, offhand sort of concoction in which the soloist drifts in and out of the richly layered orchestral fabric. The highlight was a cadenza that was both sublime and flashy (if that's possible), with brilliant, sensitive fingerwork by Vieaux.
The soloist was amplified, with a small loudspeaker at his feet, but the perennial problem of acoustic guitar and orchestra was still present. In the early going you had to listen hard to make out the guitar until the balance got worked out.
Halffter, conducting without a score, led an immensely satisfying account of the Berlioz symphony, which was fantastic in performance as well as name. The passionate opening movement was taut and exciting, getting the autobiographical theme of the composer's obsession with an Irish ingenue off to an engrossing start. The second-movement ballroom scene was a glamorous moment for the two harps, leading an elegant waltz.
The third movement's country scene (reminiscent of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony) featured principal oboe Katherine Young, standing stage left, and English horn Andrea Overturf in a hauntingly beautiful conversation. Then, in the concluding March to the Scaffold and Dream of a Witches' Sabbath, all hell broke loose with thunderous blasts of brass, mocking winds and amazing timpani.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Mar 26, 2008
By:
Phillip Booth
Jason Vieaux's got the world on a six-string
Jason Vieaux is only 34, but he's been at the top of the classical guitar world for nearly half his life. Back in 1992, he became the youngest winner ever of the prestigious Guitar Foundation of American International Competition.
Now director of the Cleveland Institute of Music's guitar program, Vieaux travels the world, playing more than 60 concerts a year.
He comes to the Tampa Bay area this weekend to perform the Villa-Lobos Guitar Concerto with the Florida Orchestra. Recently, Vieaux spoke with the Times over the phone about his long love for the concerto and whether having a guitar piece on the program might lure younger listeners to the orchestra. As he drove a snowy Pennsylvania road after a concert, Vieaux also talked about his latest solo CD, Images of Metheny, and how the lessons of jazz inform his own playing and teaching.
Does having a guitarist as the featured soloist attract some people who typically wouldn't attend an orchestral performance?
I think it has the potential to. I hope I can find a way to bring people into the symphony hall so that people, and younger people as well, can be exposed to not just the guitar concertos I'm playing but also the other stuff on the program.
What excites you about the Villa- Lobos concerto?
He was the most prolific composer of the 20th century, with over 2,000 pieces. There's a wonderful mix of his French classical music impressionism, but also combining that very skillfully and naturally with the music of Brazil. He wanted to really glorify the music of his people so he wrote a lot of choros, like the street music of Brazil. All of his music has this inflection, from the music of the aboriginal tribes of the region, with lots of evocations of wooden flutes and drums/percussion.
When did you first encounter the concerto?
I had the Julian Bream recording when I was in high school and probably listened to it every day for a year. It was my favorite piece of music when I was 15. I heard it with Julian Bream's ears. Now, upon studying the piece, I hear it differently. The second movement is gorgeous, and it has one of the most powerful solo cadenzas of any guitar concerto.
What attracted you to classical guitar?
My mother, picking up on the keen interest I had in music, bought me a guitar when I was 5. It just so happened that this guitar had nylon strings - a child-size classical guitar. We didn't know there was such a thing as classical guitar, but my mother had an awareness of Spanish guitar. When the Buffalo Guitar Quartet came to my school when I was 7 and did a lunchtime recital, my mother was working there as a secretary for the librarian. She walked up to them after the show and asked if anyone would come to the house and give private lessons. Jeremy Sparks took an interest and over the summer I turned 8 I began studying with him and continued for seven or eight years.
How much did you practice?
I didn't really mind practicing. I wanted to be good, much like an athlete that is very disciplined. You can't have a better job than this. I can't imagine anything being cooler than traveling around the world and playing music.
Since Andres Segovia broadened the audience for solo classical guitar, its popularity has boomed. As a young performer, was the competition intimidating?
I think I was a little naive in my thinking, because I didn't really know what was out there. It was pretty much self-driven. Around my later teen years I did wonder from time to time how the hell I was going to get from point A to point B. I had a lot of success in regional and national music competitions. I was 19 when I won the GFA (the Guitar Foundation of America international competition). That was another sign that maybe I had a shot at doing this for a living. That really is the biggest competition in the Western Hemisphere for classical guitar.
How did you become interested in Pat Metheny's music?
Pat Metheny was introduced to me by a composer friend who I was rooming with in my junior year. He and my other roommate introduced me to two records by Pat Metheny: First Circle and Offramp. I was just bowled over. I don't think they left my CD player for the next six months. . . . The tunes are so beautiful, and they have such wonderful melodies. I eventually got over 20 of these tunes where I had these little impromptu solo arrangements. I took 13 of his songs and basically just fleshed them out with a bit more detail and more structure.
Classical guitar has been perceived by other classical musicians as a lesser form. Is that idea waning?
The actual musicianship we display on our instrument is at an all-time high. I think we're in actually something of the beginning of a golden age, with just so many fantastic players. I hope that can improve the reputation of the guitar and its players.
What do you emphasize with your students?
I stress the importance of really being able to improvise if they can . . . so that they're not merely moving their fingers around. (I want them to) have a closer relationship with the music in the moment, and really hear what they're doing. It's what jazz musicians just do as part of their training.
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: Mar 16, 2008
By: Kurt
Loft
Pianist Can 'Rach' The House
ST. PETERSBURG - What can a musician barely out of high school share about an orchestral masterpiece?
Natasha Paremski, the 20-year-old keyboard prodigy from Moscow, let her fingers speak with eloquence Saturday night as soloist in Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with The Florida Orchestra.
While more mature soloists have brought greater depth to this warhorse, Paremski has the talent and the chops to wrap her own thoughts around its emotional core.
The nearly sold-out program at Mahaffey Theater - repeated tonight in Clearwater and Monday in Tampa - echoed a performance of the same concerto here six years ago when 19- year-old Lang Lang appeared with the orchestra.
Young performers invariably latch on to the "Rocky II," as it is affectionately known, in part because audiences need no spoon-feeding. Its dark rumblings, romantic flair and aching tunes push more emotional buttons than a frothy film score.
No wonder the concerto has maintained its status as the single most-performed concerto in the repertoire. Even people who never set foot in a concert hall know the melody of the middle movement, made all the more famous with its use in Eric Carmen's sappy 1976 pop hit, "All By Myself."
Collaborating with music director Stefan Sanderling, Paremski seemed timid in the opening movement, trading passion for a pedestrian approach in the great climax. Her lyrical touch in the nocturnal adagio, however, was the evening's highlight - enhanced by an elegant woodwind section - and she muscled her way through the intricacies of the finale without missing a note.
The audience loved it, and the sustained applause brought the soloist back for an encore.
Sanderling opened the night with 10 overly long selections from Sergei Prokofiev's ballet "Romeo and Juliet." The orchestra captured the myriad moods of the suite: the demonic "Montagues and Capulets," the sweetly lyrical "Juliet," and the brazen "Death of Tybalt."
The musicians, however, had to compete with incessant coughing from the crowd at Mahaffey, which at once point seemed like a pulmonary ward.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Mar 15, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Russian pianist freshens concerto
ST. PETERSBURG - Peter Demens, the Russian who was one of the founders of St. Petersburg, would be proud. Mahaffey Theater was virtually full on Saturday night for the Florida Orchestra's all-Russian program featuring a young Moscow-born pianist. Through the years, orchestra concerts of Russian music have drawn better crowds than anything else in St. Petersburg.
Natasha Paremski, born in 1987, was the soloist in Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, and it was exciting to witness such a talent early in her career. Right from the famous progression of chords that open the concerto, music that sounds so deeply Russian, it was obvious that here was a remarkable keyboard technique. The passagework was nimble and rapid, to be sure, but her playing also had an unusual fluidity and lightness of touch that was a pleasure to hear.
Paremski's poised account was especially fresh in that she wasn't all fire-breathing virtuosity, but provided sensitive, self-effacing accompaniment to the orchestra's dominant role in the first movement, with conductor Stefan Sanderling as attentive mediator. She really dug into the romantic soliloquy of the second movement, and then had plenty of power for the slam-bang finale. This is a pianist to watch in the future and to remember fondly hearing on the way up.
Selections from Prokofiev's score to the ballet Romeo and Juliet began the evening. Sanderling picked and chose from the three suites the composer put together, mainly from suites No. 1 and No. 2, and there were 10 movements in all, from the violent harmonies of the clash between the Montagues and Capulets to the winds sounding Juliet's death. It was almost like a Prokofiev symphony - and as long as one, at more than 45 minutes. But the sprawling swath of music lacked the development of themes in a symphony, or even in Prokofiev's own, shorter suites from the ballet. For all the brilliant music, this is one case where less would have been more.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Mar 8, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Delightful 'Petite Suite' a nice surprise
TAMPA - The Florida Orchestra has a long season, and sometimes it's the incidental pieces that stay with you more than the blockbusters. That was the case with Friday's curtain raiser, Debussy's Petite Suite, an unexpected gem whose opening movement featured a sweet flute tune over gentle strings and winds. This created a delightful fantasy effect, like the twinkling music that greeted Dorothy's arrival in Oz.
The suite's infectious melodies were by Debussy, who wrote it originally for piano, four hands, but the artful orchestration reminiscent of Ravel was by Henri-Paul Busser. Stefan Sanderling, who has been bringing a lot of French music to the orchestra lately, conducted.
Another pleasant surprise was Haydn's Horn Concerto No. 1, with James Wilson as the soloist. The Haydn is not played as often as the horn concertos of Mozart, Richard Strauss and Gliere, but it's well worth hearing.
The concerto seemed to agree with Wilson, the orchestra's principal horn who has been on leave of absence to teach at Florida State University. In a genial, almost laid back performance, he displayed classically warm, burnished tone, plenty of power to fill the hall with sound and bravura technique in the cadenzas.
Both the Debussy and Haydn deployed a reduced orchestra and worked nicely in Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's smaller Ferguson Hall.
Concertmaster Jeffrey Multer was the star of Scheherazade, Rimsky- Korsakov's take on Arabian Nights, with the solo violin representing the sultan's wife, spinning tales to avoid execution. Multer was pitch perfect in the glistening high passages, and he didn't go overboard on the vibrato. And it wasn't just the concertmaster's showpiece, as there were fine solos taken throughout the orchestra.
But Rimsky-Korsakov didn't know when to quit. Scheherazade is tiresomely repetitive and about 10 minutes too long.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Mar 6, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Orchestra's principal horn returns as soloist
James Wilson, longtime principal horn of the Florida Orchestra, has been on leave of absence this season, but he returns this weekend as the soloist in Haydn's Horn Concerto No. 1.
Wilson was originally scheduled to play the premiere of a horn concerto by David Rogers, but it has been postponed. Rogers is not only a composer but also the orchestra's busy artistic administrator, and he ran out of time to complete the concerto. "I'm a big fan of David's music and am still eager to play the piece he wants to write for me," Wilson said.
In December, Wilson, Rogers and music director Stefan Sanderling began to look around for something else to put on the program and eventually decided on the Haydn concerto. "It was written as a present for the same horn player that Mozart wrote his horn concertos for," Wilson said. "It's a very personable, beautiful piece. But it doesn't get played a lot."
Wilson has been on leave to be a visiting professor in the Florida State University school of music. He had hoped to be appointed permanently to the position, but it was eliminated as part of the Legislature's deep cuts in higher education funding. So he'll be back in the orchestra next season, as will his wife, violinist Fiona Lofthouse, also on leave and able to be at home with their twin daughters, born in January 2007.
Wilson, a member of the horn section of Santa Fe Opera during the summer, has previously been the soloist in Mozart and Richard Strauss horn concertos with the orchestra. He doesn't expect his lack of orchestra playing this season to affect his performance as soloist. He did play with the Tallahassee Symphony.
"If there was any concern I'd have, it would be endurance," he said. "You can't practice in the practice room at the level of output that you have to have in the orchestra. But playing for students - I play a lot in my lessons, demonstrating - is the same sort of hot seat as being first horn."
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Mar 1, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Helps' symphony takes flight
CLEARWATER - The Florida Orchestra did the right thing by returning to Robert Helps' Symphony No. 2 Thursday night at Ruth Eckerd Hall with music director Stefan Sanderling on the podium.
Helps, a pianist and composer who taught at the University of South Florida for two decades, was revered by followers of contemporary music. One of the orchestra's shining hours came when it premiered his Second Symphony in 2000, a year or so before the composer died at 73.
Premieres, which attract lots of attention, are easy; second performances are what matter. The USF Symphony Orchestra, conducted by William Wiedrich, a Helps expert, played the symphony in 2001, but to my knowledge, this week's performances are just the second by a professional orchestra.
In a common ploy, the orchestra paired the Helps with a warhorse, the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, perhaps to mollify listeners not inclined to like new music. Brazilian Jean Louis Steuerman was the soloist in the concerto, which took up the second half of the program, one of the shortest of the season at well under two hours.
It was rewarding to hear the orchestra play the Helps again, especially since Sanderling is a more assured advocate of modern music than Jahja Ling, the former music director who conducted the premiere. This time around, the extensive percussion writing came through more clearly as the engine of the piece, while Sanderling brought out the mysterious, layered quality of Helps' orchestration reminiscent of French impressionists such as Debussy and Charles Koechlin.
The Second Symphony is not flawless - its melancholy wispiness can be elusive, and the whip crack at the end seems too abrupt - but Helps' gentle, dissonant sound is sublime. Hearing the symphony so well played was a dream come true.
Steuerman was rather subdued in sections of the Brahms concerto that call for a pianist in the grand manner. For example, he didn't make much impression in the virtuosic opening theme by the soloist in the first movement. He had some fine moments in the exquisite Adagio, but on the whole, his performance never quite took off.
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: Feb 29, 2008
By: Kurt
Loft
Florida Orchestra Resurrects Tampa-Born Symphony
CLEARWATER - One of the more thrilling moments in the concert hall is hearing a piece played for the first time, the birth of new music and the listener's initial, white-hot impression.
But what of the second time around? Did the music ring true or fall flat? Will it breathe eternal life and speak to audiences a century from now?
Those thoughts came to mind Thursday night at Ruth Eckerd Hall, where The Florida Orchestra performed the Symphony No. 2 of Robert Helps, the late pianist and composer at the University of South Florida. The orchestra offered the premiere of Helps' symphony the year before his death in 2001, and this week brings his memory to life under the baton of Stefan Sanderling.
Helps, who studied composition under Roger Sessions, spent two years "taming the beast" as he called it - nearly a half century after completing his First Symphony. Thursday, his ideas flourished in a transparent, urgent-sounding performance that warrants repeating in a few years.
The opening section, "Awakenings," began with tuba and basses setting a dark tone as the full orchestra belched menacing sonorities. A surreal cabaret song for winds followed in the "Dance" movement, setting up the cathartic harmonies of the "Romance." A pungent "Forebodings" anchored the 25-minute symphony, and the full orchestra wrapped things up with a sharp fortissimo punch.
The second half featured Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1, with soloist Jean Louis Steuerman tackling with ease the work's considerable technical challenges. The orchestra whipped the opening movement into a storm in motion, the soloist carving his meaty chords against an incisive string section led by their animated concertmaster, Jeffrey Multer.
Poignant and refracting, the adagio revealed itself like a musical love letter, framed by Steuerman's poised finger work. The musicians struck a strong balance with their soloist in the finale, moving around big blocks of sound before bringing the concerto full circle - from its dark rumblings in D Minor to a rousing close in the bright key of D major.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Feb 9, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Double bass comes out of the shadows
TAMPA - Dee Moses has been principal double bass of the Florida Orchestra for 33 years, playing a supporting role for the most part. Double bass concertos are few and far between.
But Moses still has the cool swagger of a soloist when he gets the chance, as he demonstrated in John Harbison's Concerto for Bass Viol and Orchestra, given its Florida premiere Friday night at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Morsani Hall.
The concerto's opening movement was an homage of sorts to the medieval viol, predecessor to the violin family. To start the second movement, Moses took his instrument into its lower register, sweetly set off against a little duet by oboe and flute.
Harbison was once a jazz pianist, and that influence runs through the concerto, especially in the finale, which has wind writing reminiscent of Ravel. Moses dashed off the high- pitched harmonics, sounding like a soprano sax, with aplomb.
Projection is not a strength of the double bass, and Moses was amplified, an unorthodox, if understandable, decision. The soloist could be clearly heard, which was a good thing, of course, but the amplification also had a downside. Harbison's concerto has a complex orchestral texture that skillfully incorporates the soloist who does not have the traditional flashy cadenza, for example, and that seemed thrown out of whack in the first movement. Moses and conductor Christoph Campestrini made adjustments and the balance got better as the performance went along.
Few works are as exciting as Carmina Burana, which took up the second half of the program. The stage was overflowing with musicians, including the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay and the Tampa Bay Children's Chorus (all girls except for one boy). The excellent soloists were Joanna Mongiardo, soprano; Christopher Pfund, tenor; and Stephen Salters, baritone.
The singers of the Master Chorale were obviously having a blast in creating such a big, glamorous sound. The soloists joined in with marvelously theatrical moments, such as Pfund's over-the-top rendition of the roasted swan aria. Salters' creamy baritone was strikingly expressive in the upper range. Mongiardo's performance of In Trutina was heart- stoppingly lovely.
Orff's cantata has the occasional dead spot, but Campestrini kept things moving and handled the large forces well.
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: Feb 9, 2008
By: Kurt
Loft
Master Chorale Offers Convincing 'Carmina'
TAMPA - With a burst of chorus and kettledrums Friday night at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, listeners entered a mystic realm stuck somewhere between the Medieval and modern worlds.
The Florida Orchestra and Master Chorale of Tampa Bay teamed up for another go at Carl Orff's dramatic cantata, "Carmina Burana," music that jars the senses with its explosive choral opening, hushed chants and insistent rhythms.
"Carmina" is music like no other, poetic and profane, stripped of counterpoint, bare-boned - and essentially human. The "Songs of Beuren" is based on a collection of Latin and low German poems discovered in 1803 at a Benedictine abbey near Munich, and depicts the vagaries of life in the spring, in the tavern, and the court of love.
Millions know its striking "O Fortuna" chorus from television, movies and football games, but its riches are found in the center of a live, full-length version with 250 musicians on stage.
The Master Chorale joined the Tampa Bay Children's Chorus on bleachers behind the orchestra - an impressive musical force under the baton of guest conductor Christoph Campestrini. If the opening "O Fortuna" lacked the crisp attack it needed to shake the rafters of Morsani Hall, the performance improved with each passing section.
Baritone Stephen Salters, soprano Joanna Mongiardo and tenor Christopher Pfund made a delightful vocal trio, milking their parts with aplomb and injecting plenty of spirit and humor into their songs. Pfund's roasting swan was a highlight; Salters let loose his "seething, boiling rage"; and Mongiardo won over listeners with her delightful "Dulcissime!" aria.
Prepared by Richard Zielinski, the Master Chorale proved how virtuosic this group can be, judging from its fleeting rhythms, explosive declamation, moods of joy and sadness, and rapid-fire speech-song.
The evening was a study in contrast, opening with the orchestra's principal bassist, Dee Moses, in the Florida premiere of John Harbison's "Bass Concerto." Moses is one of 15 bassists across the country who are participating in this "rolling premiere" by the prominent American composer, whose 20-minute work moves from a lament to a cavatina to a rondo.
Full of suppressed energy and fragments of melody, the concerto evolves cautiously, nervously, finding a tonal center before it slips away. Sitting on a stool at center stage, Moses played with focus, but the work itself came off as flat and expressionless, sounding more like an academic exercise than a keeper in the heart.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Jan 26, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Orchestra mixes classic, modern for fulfilling night
TAMPA - Most people at Friday's concert by the Florida Orchestra were undoubtedly there for Tchaikovsky's evergreen Fifth Symphony. But as a kind of intellectual bonus, they also got to hear a consummate modern work, Henri Dutilleux's cello concerto, Tout un Monde Lontain... A Whole Distant World.
Stefan Sanderling conducted the program, which made for a fascinating contrast between a 19th century masterpiece, with its abundance of melody, and an outstanding example of 20th century music that is more about tone colors and the precise deployment of orchestral forces.
The gifted French cellist Xavier Phillips was the soloist, and it was excellent to hear him at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Morsani Hall, which, of all the orchestra's venues, has the best acoustics for the sometimes clinical qualities of contemporary music. Much of the solo work in the five-movement concerto takes place in the cello's upper range, and Phillips' technical command was awesome.
Dutilleux, who lives in Paris and turned 92 this week, is an academic composer. His cello concerto, premiered in 1970 with the great Mstislav Rostropovich as soloist, includes 12-tone writing in the first movement. But the music is also charged with emotion, reflecting its inspiration, the poetry of Baudelaire.
Starting with a mysterious cadenza played by Phillips, the concerto grew more extroverted as it developed over 30 minutes. At its dramatic peak in the fourth movement, the orchestration of harp, gong, marimba and strings shimmered like a bell.
With its recurring "fate" theme, Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony can be a brooding, melancholy thing, but under Sanderling's attentive baton it was positively light on its feet. Brandon Beck brought nice warmth to the famous French horn solo in the second movement. A highlight was the third movement's sprightly waltz, which Tchaikovsky put to good use a few years later in The Nutcracker.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Jan 20, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Performance inspired by the spiritual
ST. PETERSBURG - Audience members at Saturday night's Florida Orchestra concert may be excused if they skip church today. The program, conducted by music director Stefan Sanderling at Mahaffey Theater, had a distinctly spiritual theme.
First, the orchestra played Messiaen's L'Ascension, inspired by four meditations on Christ's ascent from earth to heaven, and then after intermission came Bruckner's "farewell to life," Symphony No. 9, which the composer dedicated to God.
Messiaen and Bruckner had much in common. Both were devout Catholics, both were church organists, and both owed a considerable debt to Wagner. This was especially evident in the brass orchestration of the works heard on Saturday, such as the solemn brass choir that opened L'Ascension and the spectacular brass play throughout Bruckner's symphony, which had extra horn players a total of nine and a quartet of Wagner tubas in the Adagio.
There can be a downside to the music of these two pious church organists, both of whose orchestral sonoroties tend toward opulent but somewhat static blocks of sound, which can give the sense of having been worked out on a combination of organ stops.
Sanderling has never been the most persuasive interpreter of French music, and the Messiaen seemed tentative at times. There was excellent playing by principal oboe Katherine Young and Andrea Overturf on English horn in exotic little solos in the second movement. Barbara Bird read the brief meditations in English and French before each movement (but was not identified in the program or an announcement).
The Ninth Symphony was unfinished when Bruckner died and has just three movements, but it still goes on for more than an hour. Sanderling brings great conviction to the work and its intensity never wavered in a crisp performance that featured fine play by the horn section under acting principal Brandon Beck. A visual highlight from the balcony was to watch the bowing of the strings in the excitable unison sections repeated throughout the Scherzo.
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: Jan 20, 2008
By: Kurt
Loft
Orchestra Scales Summit Of Bruckner's 9th
ST. PETERSBURG - The canon of classical music includes plenty of truncated masterworks, notably Bach's "Art of Fugue," Mozart's Requiem and Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony.
But none creates such an overwhelming sense of finality as Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 9, left in limbo at the composer's death in 1896 and The Florida Orchestra's featured work this weekend. It ranks as one of the season's highlights, judging from Saturday night's ravishing, 62-minute performance at the Mahaffey Theater.
About a thousand people braved thunderstorms to hear this majestic music, although Bruckner isn't to everyone's taste. His best symphonies are massive cathedrals in sound, tectonic in their movement, with great thematic waves crashing into one another.
If recent performances of the Seventh and Eighth symphonies showed the orchestra's Bruckner at its most inspired, the latest adventure under the baton of Stefan Sanderling ushers listeners into a mystical realm without tangible dimension.
Sanderling brought a vital forward thrust to the opening movement, his musicians playing with both bite and luminosity, and the brass section proving its mettle with ear-splitting climaxes. A choir of horns always seemed to hover over the strings, creating an intense, at times furious, contrast.
The orchestra pushed with all its weight in the scherzo, its jagged, demonic rhythms sounding like a crazed army on the march.
The adagio is Bruckner's final statement, his meditation on life and premonition of afterlife that stretches nearly half an hour. The orchestra gracefully developed the movement's varied themes, which moved around in a number of different keys until an earth-shattering climax combined six contrasting notes at once.
The musicians added colorful flourishes throughout, including poised solos by principal oboist Katherine Young. As the symphony drew to a close, listeners could almost feel that Bruckner was done, spent, his struggle with life at an end.
The evening opened with a rare performance of Olivier Messiaen's "L'Ascension: Four Meditations Symphoniques," which underscores the composer's profound views on the Catholic faith in a succession of musical collages.
The orchestra played with commitment and finesse, from the opening brass antiphons to the monochromatic meditation for strings that closes the work. Barbara Bird, a French instructor at St. Petersburg College, did an excellent job as the bilingual narrator.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Jan 12, 2008
By: Marty
Clear
'Cirque' complements music
TAMPA - Bill Allen, the creator of Cirque de la Symphonie, said orchestras around the country like booking his show because it sells tickets, adds substance and sparkle to pops performances and draws younger people.
Friday night, the performance of Cirque de la Symphonie with the Florida Orchestra succeeded powerfully on two of those levels.
The idea is to add a visual boost to orchestral concerts by adding world- class "cirque" acts, which basically means acts that combine circus skills with a fine art sensibility.
Carol Morsani Hall was packed, and if anyone was disappointed it didn't show. They audience regularly erupted into applause.
Five cirque acts appeared, at different points through the show, and most were stunning. Aerialist Alexander Streltsov provided a melancholy work of poetic fluidity, floating above the stage with grace and real drama. Juggler Vladimir Tsarkov offered comic counterpoint without diminishing the artistry. Contortionist Elena Tsarkova did things that humans shouldn't be able to do, and she did them with style and beauty.
Behind them, the Florida Orchestra played beautifully, conducted by Michael Krajewski of Cirque de la Symphonie. The orchestra also played several selections without the cirque acts.
Musically, the first was more successful by far. The orchestra played 45 minutes or so of classical music, including pieces by Dvorak, Khatchaturian, Rimsky-Korsakov and Saint-Saens. It was mostly excerpts, but a full set of classical music is a rare treat in a pops concert.
After intermission, the music selection regressed into standard pops territory, including music from Star Wars and Harry Pottermovies. Considering how well the classical selections worked, and how heartily they were received, it didn't seem necessary for the orchestra to play popular music. But it still sounded great.
One goal the show, which will come to Mahaffey Theater tonight and tomorrow, did not accomplish was to attract younger people. At Friday's show, the demographic appeared about the same as that of standard pops concerts.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Jan 5, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Sibelius soars but Mozart is earthbound
TAMPA - Sibelius had the gift of strangeness. Take the Finnish composer's First Symphony, which begins with a long, melancholy clarinet melody over hushed timpani, a strangely fragile, almost diffident way to launch such a robust work.
Those opening measures, poetically played by principal clarinet Brian Moorhead and principal timpani John Bannon, unfolded like a northern flower seeking the sun under the baton of Gunther Herbig, guest conductor of the Florida Orchestra on Friday night at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Morsani Hall.
Herbig, with his silvery mane and erect bearing, is the very picture of the old-school maestro. He was music director of orchestras in Potsdam, Dresden and the former East Berlin in communist East Germany. He comes to the Florida Orchestra through his friendship with music director Stefan Sanderling and, especially, Sanderling's conductor father, Kurt. In 1977, Herbig succeeded Kurt Sanderling as music director of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and held the post until immigrating to the United States in 1984 to head the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
The romantic repertoire is Herbig's forte, and his reading of the Sibelius symphony was a pleasure. He brought a suave hand to its artful construction, such as the ever-shifting tempos of the first movement and the contrasting dynamics of the third movement. He expertly highlighted bassoon and harp passages. In the finale there was some glorious brass leading into the restrained final chords.
The concert started out with Mozart's Symphony No. 41 Jupiter. This was perfectly fine, in Herbig's broad, expansive conducting, but the performance never really took off.
Woody Allen once said that the Jupiter Symphony's incredible finale, in which no fewer than five themes are contrapuntally woven together like a baroque tapestry, proved the existence of God. As wonderful as Mozart's last symphony always is, there were probably still a few atheists in the audience on Friday.
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: Jan 5, 2008
By: Kurt
Loft
Orchestra Has Night Of Symphonic Delight
TAMPA - Anyone curious about the evolution of the symphony should bend an ear to this weekend's offering by The Florida Orchestra, which pairs two shining examples of the art by composers in their first and final attempts.
The symphony has come a long way from its childhood as a sinfonia, a sort of musical trailer designed to make audiences stop talking and pay attention. Clever composers added new twists until it grew from a polite reminder to a multi-layered main event.
The orchestra presented its shortest and purist program of the season Friday night at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, with guest conductor Gunther Herbig spinning contrast between Mozart's Symphony No. 41, "Jupiter," and the Symphony No. 1 of Finland's greatest composer, Jean Sibelius.
Conducting from memory, the 76-year- old Herbig showed his affinity for Sibelius' luscious symphony, urging musicians into moments of resplendent rhapsody. Brian Moorhead's lamenting clarinet solo at the onset was a study in poise, and the orchestra was marvelous in its way with suspended climaxes and intense rhythmic turns in the inner movements. They created an infectious atmosphere in the closing fantasia, the only distraction being a low hum in the hall during breaks between movements.
Mozart opened the night, and if the allegro sounded a bit too glossy for some tastes, individual details soon surfaced liked bubbles rising in a pond. The orchestra generated plenty of sparkle in the two movements leading up to the finale, when it unleashed five separate themes in a collision between fugue and sonata - without question one of the great finishes in all music.
Source: St. Petersburg
Times
Published: Jan 3, 2008
By: John
Fleming
Conductor offers perspective from behind the baton
One of last season's best Florida Orchestra concerts was led by guest conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, the venerable Polish-born former music director of the Minnesota Orchestra. This weekend, another old-school central European conductor transplanted to the Midwest will be in front of the orchestra, Gunther Herbig, a German who was music director of the Detroit and Toronto symphony orchestras in the 1980s and '90s.
Herbig, 76, who lives in a Detroit suburb, comes to the Florida Orchestra through his friendship with music director Stefan Sanderling and, especially, Sanderling's conductor father, Kurt. In 1977, Herbig succeeded Kurt Sanderling as music director of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, which was communist East Germany's equivalent to the renowned Berlin Philharmonic in West Germany.
"Kurt Sanderling is one of the great conductors of the second half of the 20th century," said Herbig, who was resident conductor under Sanderling for five years in the former East Berlin. "His renderings of the symphonies of Shostakovich especially are incredible. A great conductor and musician and a great orchestra educator. He really brought that orchestra up to a world standard."
Herbig remembers Stefan Sanderling as a clarinet-playing teenager who went to school with his son. "He was interested in music all the time, and it was obvious he would go into it as a career," Herbig said in a phone interview in December.
In communist East Berlin, concerts by the state-supported symphony orchestra were well attended. "We had 11,000 subscribers and always had sold- out houses," Herbig said. "Because people had not very much else to do, they turned to music and opera. In that way, it was a very artistically fulfilling time with this great interest by the public."
Herbig said he and other artists were not pressured to join the Communist Party. "Among the 80 orchestras in East Germany, there were only two music directors who were party members," he said. "The authorities were happy to have somebody who was professionally the right man, and they didn't bother about any ideological affiliation."
In 1984, five years before the Berlin Wall came down, Herbig and his family immigrated to the United States, and he became music director of the Detroit Symphony. "We came to a point where we could not stand living there anymore," he said. "We always expected that this situation could not last forever, because something that was based on lies and untrue assumptions would sooner or later disappear. But it seemed to be so strong that we never expected that it would happen in our lifetime."
Today, Herbig divides his time as a guest conductor in North America and Europe. His programs tend to run to the romantic repertoire, heavy on the symphonies of Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and Shostakovich. Here, he is leading the orchestra in the Sibelius First Symphony and Mozart's Symphony No. 41 "Jupiter".
Herbig worries about the health and survival of symphony orchestras in the United States. "All of them, with the possible exceptions of Boston and San Francisco, are constantly threatened by lack of funds," he said. "If an American orchestra dies, there is no classical music in a city."
Even in Europe, Herbig sees ominous signs. "I would say the orchestra tradition is still solid, but there is the same problem that you find all over the Western world that the younger generation is much less interested in classical music than the generations before them. Sooner or later it results in dwindling attendance."
He laments the loss of "what in Germany is called 'house music,' where families come together and play music and sing. In the bourgeois world of Europe this was a must. Every child had to learn an instrument. Now it's no longer part of their upbringing."
Herbig sees the precarious position of symphony orchestras and classical music in the context of a huge historic shift. "We are in the process of such a big cultural change," he said. "The disappearance of the culture of the bourgeois of the 19th and part of the 20th century is a change that may be comparable only to the Renaissance, when completely new aspects of art and aesthetics appeared. It's very difficult to predict how this will affect symphony orchestras."
Source: The Tampa
Tribune
Published: Jan 2, 2008
By: Kurt
Loft
Concerts Make Most Of Mozart
TAMPA - Imagine going through life without ever hearing a Mozart symphony.
Gunther Herbig hopes to prevent such a tragedy when he leads The Florida Orchestra in three performances of the composer's Symphony No. 41, the famed "Jupiter."
For some who attend one of the upcoming programs, it will be their initial taste of Mozart. For others, it will be part of an endlessly joyful cycle.
The newcomers, Herbig says, are targets for enlightenment.
"There are people who are hearing Mozart for the first time, and that's something I always keep in my mind," he says.
"I tell the musicians, 'You have played this 50 times, but for some in the audience, it will be their very, very first encounter with this masterpiece. So you should put everything into it to give them this overwhelming experience.'"
The "Jupiter" is Mozart's final symphony, a culmination of the form at the time it was completed in 1788. Although written quickly, the symphony is a model of liquid grace and immense complexity, of perfectly placed accents and rhythmic shifts, of what the English critic Donald Francis Tovey called "the final subtlety of an immensely experienced artist."
It also stands up to time. Mozart's last three symphonies, all written in a single summer, are bedrocks of the concert hall and most likely will remain popular in another 200 years.
"Mozart doesn't seem to age, unlike other composers we see in our own time, composers who were leading names of the 20th century," says Herbig, who also will conduct the Symphony No. 1 of Jan Sibelius this weekend.
"With Mozart, it's different. The incredible mastery of all the musical details and the sheer beauty of how he expresses what he has to say means he still speaks of our time."
