The Florida Orchestra

 

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

 

Holidays busiest time of year for Florida Orchestra Brass Quintet

Nothing says holiday music like the sound of a brass quintet. In the Tampa Bay area that means the Florida Orchestra Brass Quintet, celebrating its 30th anniversary this season.

"Jubilant, uplifting, the ringing sounds, it lifts your spirits, that's what it's all about," says Dwight Decker of the holiday music the quintet plays, from Sleigh Ride to Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming, an ancient Christmas carol. Decker is principal trombone with the orchestra and a founding member of the group.

Not surprisingly, the holiday season is the busiest time of the year for the fivesome, which also includes principal tuba Bill Mickelson, another original member; Rob Smith and Ken Brown, the principal and assistant principal trumpets of the orchestra; and assistant principal French horn Brandon Beck. They are giving half a dozen performances in December, including a recital today in Clearwater and another Friday in Tarpon Springs.

Of course, the quintet has to schedule its gigs around those of the orchestra, which also has a full calendar, ranging from last weekend's masterworks program of Bruckner and Beethoven to its own holiday concerts.

"We have to be versatile,'' Decker says. "Some of us even have to change equipment. The trumpets use rotary valve trumpets in Bruckner. They go back to their normal equipment for the quintet work. I'll use a different size mouthpiece for Bruckner and the quintet. So it's challenging from a physical standpoint just to change from one to another.''

Stylistically, the quintet also has to cover the waterfront. "The arrangement dictates style,'' Decker says. "And the Glory of the Lord, the first chorus from Messiah, will require a completely different approach than later in the program when we play Winter Wonderland, which is in a swing style. We have to be chameleons.''

Decker says he and other group members are always on the lookout for refreshing new arrangements. "One of the pieces we're excited about is a wassail sort of affair, a Puerto Rican version by Louis Moreau Gottschalk that he wrote back in the middle of the 19th century, transcribed for brass quintet. It's an interesting piece because it's got so much rhythm and syncopation to it. It foreshadows early jazz and ragtime. Gottschalk was really ahead of his time.''

At 59, Decker has spent much of his life in the orchestra, joining in 1973. He has become accustomed to the cycle of musical activity throughout the year.

"Much of the year we are underutilized,'' he says. "So I always think that we are like farmers. During the holidays, it's harvest time, and you have to work constantly because now is when the work is. I'm not complaining. I'm a farmer and it's harvest time. It goes with the territory.''

The downside is that the holiday season can sometimes feel artistically stultifying, just one more round of The Nutcracker and Joy to the World and Silent Night, though not to Decker.

"I don't mind the repetition,'' he says. "I think it's beautiful stuff. It'll lift your heart every time.''
 

Top

 

Source: The Tampa Tribune
Published: December 11, 2009
By: Kathy Greenberg

Celtic flavor highlights Orchestra's schedule

Joanie Madden, founding member of the traditional Irish singing group Cherish the Ladies, is chockablock full of folksy colloquialisms. She actually used the word "chockablock" in a telephone interview, as well as phrases like "only the strongest trees survive" and "pulling my leg." Madden is a singing, flute- and whistle-playing blend of Irish wit and New York no-nonsense, and this dichotomy is not lost on her. In fact, it may very well be the key to her success.

"I was a girl from the Bronx playing Irish music," said Madden. "Now I'm part of the most successful Celtic musical group in the world."

Celebrating its 25th year, Cherish the Ladies went from playing 100-seat-venues to filling symphony halls. The six-woman band — Madden, Mary Coogan, Roisin Dillon, Michelle Burke, Mirella Murray and Kathleen Boyle — will be at the Mahaffey Theater this month, performing with the Florida Orchestra for one night only. Then it's off to New York, Rhode Island, Michigan and Oklahoma, with a pond-skip to Scotland. They're all over the place, but it all started in a crowded home in the Bronx.

"My father was a fantastic musician. He passed music down to us kids. I'm the only one of seven who plays traditional Irish music, and my mother says she's glad because one lunatic is enough," Madden recalled.

Madden took lessons from Irish-American flutist Jack Coen and went on to win world championships in flute and whistle. She became the first American to win the Senior All-Irish Championship on the whistle. Her fellow band mates — both American- and Irish-born — share equally impressive musical backgrounds, all of which will be showcased at the Mahaffey concert.

Accompanied by the Florida Orchestra and traditional Irish step dancers, Cherish the Ladies will perform songs from their latest Christmas album, "A Star in the East," as well as classics such as "The First Noel" and "Silent Night."

"We have some new charts being made that we're christening in St. Pete. I love performing with the symphony behind us. It never fails to make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck," Madden said.

The same could be said of audiences when these women harmonize vocals with the accordion, fiddle, piano and flute.

But no matter where they are in the world or how many accolades they receive — and there have been plenty — their talent, pride in heritage and busy schedule keep them grounded.

"We're chockablock through May, and summer is filling up. A lot of good things are coming. When the Celtic boom happened, we were part of it. We rode the Celtic wave. Only the strongest trees survive. We're there and we love it," said Madden.

Top

 

Source: St. Petersburg Times
Published: December 11, 2009
By: John Fleming

Conductor Alastair Willis will wedge in the Grammy show to see if he wins

ST. PETERSBURG — Conductor Alastair Willis' schedule is full. After leading Thursday's coffee concert with the Florida Orchestra, he's got performances to conduct in Washington state, Germany and Canada through December and most of January, but he just happens to have Jan. 31 off.

Good thing: That's the night of the Grammy Awards, and Willis is up for one. A concert version of Ravel's opera L'enfant et Les Sortileges (Naxos), performed by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Willis, received a nomination in the category of best classical album.

"It came out of the blue. Totally shocked. Totally honored,'' Willis said, interviewed before the orchestra's morning concert at Mahaffey Theater.

Willis, who plans to attend the Grammy ceremonies in Los Angeles, probably won't be seen on the CBS telecast, which will lavish its attention on pop stars like Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga. The classical awards are usually given off the air. But he's still among august company.

The other nominees for best classical album are Bernstein's Mass, performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop; Mahler's Symphony No. 8 and Adagio from Symphony No. 10, performed by the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas; Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe, performed by the Boston Symphony, conducted by James Levine; and Shostakovich's The Nose, performed by the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, conducted by Valery Gergiev.

Willis is in his second season conducting the orchestra coffee series, and the morning concerts of light classics are as popular as ever. For Thursday's concert of orchestra music from operas, featuring principal flute Clay Ellerbroek in the Carmen Fantasy, Mahaffey was virtually full.

"There's nothing like going out and seeing a packed house,'' said Willis, a gangly, boyish figure whose clear conducting technique drew a fine, nuanced performance from the orchestra. His remarks between numbers from the podium were witty and established good audience rapport. "Now we're going to play a three-hour opera in 10 minutes,'' he said, describing an arrangement of excerpts from La Boheme.

Willis, 38, was born in Massachusetts and spent much of his youth in England (he speaks with an English accent). His older sister, Sarah, plays French horn in the Berlin Philharmonic, which also released a CD this year of L'enfant et Les Sortileges, conducted by its distinguished music director, Simon Rattle. As the reviews posted on Willis' Web site (alastairwillis.com) indicate, quite a few critics preferred his interpretation over Rattle's.

For a conductor, Willis has an unusually eclectic background. In 1995-96, he played trumpeter Goodman "Goody'' King in the London production of the dance musical Fame. "But that's one part of my life you won't see today,'' he said before Thursday's concert. "I've hung up my Fame dancing shoes.''

Top

 

Source: The Tampa Tribune
Published: December 6, 2009
By: Buddy Jaudon

Orchestra scales sublime heights

TAMPA - On a night in October 2002, Stefan Sanderling conducted his first performance with The Florida Orchestra, though he hadn't yet taken over as music director. The program featured Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 "Emperor," and on that night, soloist Misha Dichter replaced an ailing Horacio Gutierrez for the performance.

Friday night at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, Sanderling may have had a sense of dejÀ vu. With the same work on the menu, and the originally scheduled Stefan Vladar having canceled because of illness, pianist James Tocco stepped into the breach.

The "Emperor" is very much the epitome of piano concerti, fulfilling its role as a showpiece while escaping the superficiality that afflicts some others. It is ebullient music, and shows its colors from the outset.

Tocco certainly had all the right ideas for the work: grandeur in the first movement, contemplation (but not stasis) in the slow movement, and rollick and roar in the dance finale. If the execution was somewhat less-than-convincing, it can probably be attributed to the unusual circumstances. The rather lengthy break between the first and second movements to seat latecomers also did no favors.

The second half of the program was left to the Sixth Symphony of Anton Bruckner, which has a reputation as the Austrian composer's neglected child. It's difficult to understand this lack of popularity, given its relative brevity and forthright nature.

As is so often the case in Bruckner, the brass players are tested early and often in this work, and they performed admirably, raising chills with their efforts in the first movement, and setting off a perfect blaze of affirmation in the finale.

The graceful slow movement alone should place this symphony higher in Bruckner's canon. Sanderling's tempo here was ideal, and the wind and string playing strong.

On a whole, it is difficult to conceive of a better live performance of this symphony.

Top

 

Source: St. Petersburg Times
Published: November 7, 2009
By: John Fleming

Composer, concertmaster shine

TAMPA — The Florida Orchestra has done an excellent thing by bringing in Scottish composer James MacMillan to conduct not only his own music but also that of Ralph Vaughan Williams, an earlier British master with whom he clearly has a kinship. To round out this weekend's program, concertmaster Jeffrey Multer is the soloist in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto.

MacMillan, 50, is in the prime of his brilliant career, and the orchestra has played two of his works in previous seasons, The Confession of Isobel Gowdie and the percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel. So the audience was ready for some of his newest music Friday night in Morsani Hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center: three orchestral interludes from his second opera, The Sacrifice, obviously inspired by Britten's Sea Interludes from his opera Peter Grimes.

MacMillan's interludes opened the concert with a compact display of his gift for orchestral color, especially in the percussion writing. The way that moments of shimmering delicacy and precision were punctuated by mighty blasts in the brass and percussion reminded me of Shostakovich. The orchestra gave an alert performance for the composer, whose conducting style is clear and energetic.

Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is one of those beloved romantic showpieces that is forever playing in the concert hall of your mind. Multer was impressively secure in the high keening passages, of which the concerto has many, and he paced the famous cadenza in the first movement beautifully, drawing out the drama of it. His playing of the noble, melancholy tune of the Andante was a pleasure without becoming a sentimental wallow, and he had plenty in reserve for the virtuosic finale.

Part of MacMillan's mission in coming to Florida was to spread the gospel of British music, and he succeeded splendidly on that score with Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 4. It has the reputation of being a punishing, brutal work from the composer best known for bucolic, pretty works such as The Lark Ascending and Fantasia on Greensleeves. The symphony is uncompromising in its modernity, and I have heard some angry, abrupt performances (a recording conducted by Andre Previn, for example). But amid the tumult there was a lush loveliness to the music under MacMillan's baton, as in the surprisingly gentle dissonance of the opening theme and the dreamy flute solo that ended the second movement. The frenetic finish left the audience in stunned silence before breaking into applause.

John Fleming can be reached at fleming@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8716. He blogs on Critics Circle at blogs.tampabay.com/arts.

Top

 

Source: The Tampa Tribune
Published: November 2, 2009
By: Kathy Greenberg

Orchestra to perform 2 very different classics

In November, two very different eras will collide when the Florida Orchestra's program features Mendelssohn's "Violin Concerto in E Minor," followed by the Beatles-inspired "Classical Mystery Tour." Whether born in 1844 or 1964, both musical standards have had lasting significance among various cultures and generations, proving the breadth of the term "classic."

In 1835, Felix Mendelssohn was the principal conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He began composing "Violin Concerto in E Minor" in 1938 as a token of respect for his childhood friend Ferdinand David, whom he appointed as the orchestra's concertmaster.

"It's one of the most famous violin concertos. We teach this to our students when they are way too young to be playing it. After I started practicing it [for the November concert], I realized that it's so hard. It's so demanding and exacting. You hear how difficult it really is. The more I work on it, the more I can't believe I played this when I was 12," said concertmaster and violinist Jeffrey Multer.

The program also includes James MacMillan's "The Sacrifice: Three Interludes" and "Symphony No. 4" by Vaughan Williams.

More than 100 years after Mendelssohn first unveiled "Violin Concerto" in Leipzig, the Beatles rocked the world on "The Ed Sullivan Show." In 1977, the musical revue "Beatlemania," which celebrated the Beatles' life and music, became a Broadway sensation. The show sparked an album, a movie and revival tours. "Classical Mystery Tour" is one of those revivals.

The "Mystery Tour's" tribute band is made up of Chris Camilleri (Ringo), Jim Owen (John), Thomas Teeley (George) and Tony Kishman (Paul). They've been touring and performing with dozens of orchestras across the country, including the Florida Orchestra during the 2004-2005 season.

"A lot of Beatles tunes had string accompaniment and orchestral textures," said Henry Adams, associate director of marketing and communications for the Florida Orchestra. "All of that is in this [performance]. To hear it live is like, 'Goosebumps! Wow!'"

Costume changes occur throughout the show to represent each period in Beatles history. According to Adams, you'd swear you were watching and listening to the original band members.

"It's kind of spooky, but a delightful kind of spooky. You really have to do a double take. Who are these guys really?" Adams said.

The common link between the Beatles and Mendelssohn is the enduring quality of their respective compositions. Their work has been listened to, recorded, played and written about for years. And there's a reason for that.

"When something that has staying power, especially in music, it says something and means something and gives you some sort of emotional connection. It can be the Beatles, Mahler or Beethoven," said Adams.

CONCERT PREVIEW

Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor

WHAT: Masterworks with conductor James MacMillan and violinist Jeffrey Multer

WHEN AND WHERE: 8 p.m. Friday at Carol Morsani Hall, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa; 8 p.m. Saturday at Mahaffey Theater, 400 First St. S., St. Petersburg; 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Ruth Eckerd Hall, Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater

TICKETS: $20 to $67; call (727) 892-3337 or 1-800-662-7286

Classical Mystery Tour

WHAT: Pops with guest conductor Martin Herman and members of the Broadway show "Beatlemania"

WHEN AND WHERE: 8 p.m. Nov. 27 at Carol Morsani Hall, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa; 8 p.m. Nov. 28 and 2 p.m. Nov. 29 at Mahaffey Theater, 400 First St. S., St. Petersburg

TICKETS: $20 to $67; call (727) 892-3337 or 1-800-662-7286.

Top

 

Source: St. Petersburg Times
Published: November 1, 2009
By: John Fleming

Scottish composer James MacMillan to conduct Florida Orchestra

James MacMillan has a knack for controversy. A year ago, the Scottish composer gave a speech in which he warned of "ignorance-fueled hostility to religion'' by liberal elites. He said that embracing spirituality is one of the most radical things a musician can do.

As a Roman Catholic, MacMillan is part of a distinct minority in largely Protestant Scotland, and he has raised hackles among his fellow Scots through the years by writing and speaking about the anti-Catholic bigotry he experienced growing up in the 1960s in rural Ayrshire, not far from Glasgow. He has even blamed the 16th century Scottish Reformation as a root cause for his homeland's relatively undistinguished classical music heritage.

But two weeks ago, speaking by phone from Manchester, England, where he was conducting the BBC Philharmonic, MacMillan amiably dismissed his reputation as a kind of cultural bomb thrower.

"People have always argued about religion,'' he said in a soft Scottish burr. "Sometimes that brings hostility, but we shouldn't take it too personally and probably ought to develop a thick skin.''

As a young man, MacMillan was a fiery socialist. Now he describes himself as "a lapsed left-winger, or a recovering liberal.'' But he's quick to add that "I've not become right-wing in the process. I'd say I'm very much an agnostic now when it comes to politics.''

MacMillan, 50, who has a strong claim on being the greatest living British composer, will be in the Tampa Bay area this week to conduct the Florida Orchestra in one of his latest works, The Sacrifice: Three Interludes. This comes after two other works by him, The Confession of Isobel Gowdie and his percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, were performed with great success by the orchestra during the past two seasons.

The interludes come from MacMillan's second opera, The Sacrifice, based on a story in The Mabinogian, a collection of Welsh myths. They are short — totaling about 14 minutes — and are like orchestral "postcards'' from the opera, said MacMillan, who was inspired by Benjamin Britten's Four Sea Interludes from the opera Peter Grimes.

MacMillan's program is anchored by Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 4, one of the English composer's nine symphonies. "There is a kind of British trajectory in modality in the 20th century for which Vaughan Williams was a very important figure,'' said MacMillan, making his first visit to Florida. "He's not as well known outside the U.K., so I'm very keen to bring his music with me when I go abroad.''

Also on the program is Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, with concertmaster Jeffrey Multer as the soloist. This reinforces the British theme since the German Mendelssohn spent much time in Victorian England and composed several classics inspired by his travels in Scotland.

To have a composer of MacMillan's stature conducting his own work is a big deal. "There is something special about a composer's own reading of his music,'' he said. "That doesn't mean it's the best reading, but there's a uniqueness about it that gets inside the music in a particular kind of way.''

A lot of MacMillan's music has an obviously Scottish flavor — he thinks his Piano Concerto No. 2 and A Scotch Bestiary, an organ concerto, are his most indigenous recent works — but he also clearly has a kinship with Shostakovich and later Russian composers like Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina, and the Estonian Arvo Part. He is fascinated by their musical responses to a totalitarian, antireligious society.

"Many of the post-Shostakovich composers in Soviet Russia and other countries behind the Iron Curtain were profoundly religious in their outlook,'' he said. "That's obviously a reaction against the imposition of a state atheism on the culture.''

MacMillan is a prolific composer — he has 183 works listed on the Web site of his publisher, Boosey & Hawkes — who frequently writes religious music, such as his mammoth St. John Passion, which will be given its U.S. premiere in January by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Many of his choral works are settings of liturgical texts.

The influence of Catholicism on his composing has "become more conscious as the years have gone by,'' said MacMillan, married with three children, who directs a Dominican church choir in Glasgow. "I'm very aware that there is a huge body of people who regard music as a truly spiritual art form. I think I'm simply recognizing the truth of that observation and I open myself up to the deeper theological meaning of my work.''

With his religious preoccupations, MacMillan puts himself in the tradition of Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Messiaen and other composers of a spiritual bent. "Quite a prominent number of major figures of our musical heritage of recent time have been on a search for the sacred,'' he said. "You could say that the cutting-edge thrust of modern music is deeply entwined with a religious instinct.''

In some ways, MacMillan sees spirituality as the salvation of classical music in the face of an overwhelmingly secular pop culture. "The ubiquity of pop culture has pushed people's curiosity about the arts to the periphery,'' he said. "Perhaps we need to find that curiosity again. Perhaps when people tire of the blandness of mass-produced pop culture and its connections with advertising, they'll go searching again, and perhaps they'll find something of more sustenance in so-called serious music. We, or at least our music, will be waiting for them.''

John Fleming can be reached at fleming@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8716. He blogs on Critics Circle at blogs.tampabay.com/arts.

Many listeners in the United States were introduced to James MacMillan's music about 15 years ago by the sensational recording of his percussion concerto, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, played by the composer's fellow Scot, Evelyn Glennie. That CD on the Catalyst label is still available, and now much of the rest of MacMillan's work is represented on disc. With his turning 50 this year, there have been a lot of new releases. Here are three of them.

• MacMillan/Vaughan Williams: Silence and Music; SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart/ Marcus Creed, conductor (Hanssler): This disc makes the case for an affinity between MacMillan and Vaughan Williams in their choral works. Mairi, MacMillan's setting of a Gaelic poem for a 16-part motet, is a gem.

• MacMillan: St. John Passion; London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Colin Davis, conductor (LSO Live): In what may be MacMillan's most ambitious work, he sets the Good Friday gospel, with baritone Christopher Maltman as Christ. Recorded live on two CDs, with a mostly English text, this is the latest expression of the composer's highly dramatic approach to liturgical music.

• MacMillan: Quickening and The Sacrifice: Three Interludes; BBC Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Chorus, Hilliard Ensemble/James MacMillan, conductor (Chandos): Here's a preview of what MacMillan will be performing with the Florida Orchestra in virtuosic orchestral interludes from his second opera. Quickening is his four-movement cantata on childbirth and parenting, with text by Scottish poet Michael Symmons Roberts.

James MacMillan conducts the Florida Orchestra at 8 p.m. Friday at Morsani Hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Tampa; 8 p.m. Saturday at Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg; and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 8 at Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater. $20-$67. (727) 892-3337 or toll-free 1-800-662-7286; floridaorchestra.org.

MacMillan will be at the Studio@620, 620 First Ave. S, St. Petersburg, at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday as part of the "Intimate Collaboration'' series by the studio and the orchestra. The program will also include concertmaster Jeffrey Multer. $10 suggested donation. Reservations recommended. (727) 895-6620.

Top

 

Source: The Tampa Tribune
Published: October 25, 2009
By: Buddy Jaudon

Orchestra nails complex work

TAMPA - Gustav Mahler said of his Third Symphony, "The whole of nature finds its voice in it and tells of secrets so deep as might be grasped in a dream."

Indeed, the Third is broad and complex and also, more than any other of Mahler's works, is a true journey - up from mindless nature to the joy of heavenly love.

On Friday night, the journey was undertaken by The Florida Orchestra for the first time in Stefan Sanderling's tenure as music director. The orchestra continued to demonstrate its mastery of Mahler's challenging works, though this demonstration occurred before an only partially filled Carol Morsani Hall at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.

In both of the pillarlike outer movements, the playing was superlative. The choir of French horns shattered the calm with perfect ferocity to start the first movement's aural warfare, and the brass playing was generally precise and powerful throughout.

The final slow movement, at its beginning a note-for-note retelling of the Lento assai from Beethoven's final string quartet, unfolded at a perfect pace. In this movement, as well as in the second movement variations, the strings, alternately stinging and soothing, showed great balance and energy.

Longtime orchestra fans will probably remember two performances of the Third under Sanderling's predecessor, Jahja Ling, which included exquisite performances by mezzo-soprano Janice Taylor.

Friday's soloist, Susanne Mentzer, gave an exceptional performance of her own, providing an emotionally telling center to the proceedings with her work in the fourth movement's setting of the "Midnight Song" from "Thus Spake Zarathustra."

The Tampa Bay Children's Chorus played its part with panache in the fifth movement, with "bimms" and "bamms" ringing around the hall like the bells they imitated. The Women's Chorus of the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay gave life and luster to their angelic choruses in the same movement.

In all, this was a fine performance of what is always a transformational work to hear live. The performance repeats at 7:30 p.m. today at Clearwater's Ruth Eckerd Hall, and should on no account be missed.

Top

 

Source: St. Petersburg Times
Published: October 24, 2009
By: John Fleming

Florida Orchestra pulls off an accessible, exquisite Mahler

Mahler had many thematic ideas for his Third Symphony when he was composing it over the summers of 1895 and 1896 in the Austrian countryside — ideas involving nature and heaven and love — but none of them matter. You don't need to know anything about what went into the writing of this mighty work except that it is 100 minutes of constant, amazing music.

There's nothing else quite like Mahler Three, and the Florida Orchestra rose to the occasion with one of its finest performances under music director Stefan Sanderling on Friday night. Disappointingly, Morsani Hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center was only about half full to experience this glorious work.

To be sure, Mahler is not easy listening, but the effort it takes to get inside his sound world is repaid many times over. For such a huge orchestra — nine French horns, for example — the playing was full of delicacy and finesse, credit to Sanderling's command of the work. The unconventional finale (marked "Slow. Calm. Deeply felt.'') can be a drag under the wrong conductor, but he struck a balance of intense restraint and gentleness that was mesmerizing through the long movement, and then the big finish was all the more magnificent.

The orchestra brass set the bar high in the opening movement with spooky muted trumpets and Dwight Decker's superb solo trombone. Robert Smith overcame a smudged note to shine in the third movement's lovely, treacherous post horn solo.

Susanne Mentzer was the mezzo-soprano who announced the solemn warning O Mensch! Gib Acht! (Oh, Man, take heed!), and she brought a subtle theatricality to the solo that was ideal. She joined with the Tampa Bay Children's Chorus and women of the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay in the celestial choir of the fifth movement, the most purely joyous music of the night.

TICKETS: $20 to $67; call (727) 892-3337 or 1-800-662-7286, or go to www.floridaorchestra.org

Top

 

Source: The Tampa Tribune
Published: October 22, 2009
By: Kathy Greenberg

Florida Orchestra to perform revolutionary Mahler work

TAMPA - This weekend, The Florida Orchestra will perform a symphony that exemplifies art imitating life. Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 3 expresses nature's complex dualities — joy and sadness, hope and despair, birth and death. It is a romantic microcosm of flora and fauna that reflects Mahler's own conflicts in life.

"He was the most famous conductor of his time, but he was never liked. He was always an outsider," said Stefan Sanderling, the orchestra's music director. "There's a lot of struggle in this piece, (with) hope for a catharsis at the end. Mahler was this kind of person. (Symphony No. 3) is the quintessence of Mahler's works."

Bohemian-born Mahler was Austria's leading composer and conductor during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was a romanticist and modernist in still-traditional Viennese society, drawing scorn from music critics and admiration from the public.

He crafted Symphony No. 3 over a period of 5 to 8 years in the 1890s. At 1 hour and 40 minutes, it's considered the longest symphony in the standard repertoire. More important than the pronounced length, however, are the structure and content.

"The way the drama is created is very operatic. I would describe it as a very personal and revolutionary way of creating music. It has a lot to do with personal testimony, which was completely new 100 years ago," Sanderling said.

The program also features the Women's Chorus of the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, the Tampa Bay Children's Chorus and mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer. Mahler never articulated why he included a women's choir or the pure voices of children in his music. Perhaps he never had to. He felt that it was right, and sometimes feelings defy explanation.

"The emotional impact is so clear. That is one of the strong points of Mahler's music. You see the urge to embrace the world and you see the composer's urge to describe his view of the world. You don't have to understand anything about music to still feel its beauty and richness," Sanderling said.

CONCERT PREVIEW

Mahler's Symphony No. 3

WHAT: Masterworks with conductor Stefan Sanderling, the Women's Chorus of the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, the Tampa Bay Children's Chorus and mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer

WHEN AND WHERE: 8 p.m. Friday at Carol Morsani Hall, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa; 8 p.m. Saturday at Mahaffey Theater, 400 First St. S., St. Petersburg; 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Ruth Eckerd Hall, Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater

TICKETS: $20 to $67; call (727) 892-3337 or 1-800-662-7286, or go to www.floridaorchestra.org

Top

 

Source: St. Petersburg Times
Published: October 10, 2009
By: John Fleming

Orchestra starts with a Latin beat

TAMPA — The Florida Orchestra didn't waste any time getting to a highlight of its Latin-themed concert that opened the 2009-10 masterworks season Friday night at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Music director Stefan Sanderling plunged the orchestra right into Mexican composer Arturo Marquez's Danzon No. 2, which combines inventive rhythms with glorious massed strings. It felt like Morsani Hall had been turned into a glamorous supper club with a great band playing for dancing.

As I listened to Danzon No. 2, from a series of pieces by Marquez based on music from Cuba and the Veracruz region of Mexico, I was thinking what an excellent introduction to orchestra music it was for young people: fast, rhythmically interesting and fun. Not incidentally, it has become a trademark of Venezuela's fabled Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra under conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the wunderkind making his debut this week as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

In de Falla's Spanish ballet El Amor de Brujo (Love Bewitched), contralto Jennifer Hines was the bewitcher, an opera singer with the slinky style of a chanteuse. The four songs scattered among the 10 movements are pitched low, and at times Hines was a little hard to hear over the busy orchestra. Still, her flamenco flair made a striking impression.

Guitarist Manuel Barrueco and bandoneon player Daniel Binelli were magnificent soloists in Astor Piazzolla's Double Concerto for Guitar and Bandoneon, a large and beautiful button accordion central to the melancholy sound of the Argentine tango (Piazzolla was a master of the instrument). The concerto, with a small orchestra of about 30 players, was an enchanting mix of classical precision and free-form jazz. As an encore, Barrueco and Binelli played a marvelous tribute to tango's roots in the whorehouse, Piazzolla's Bordel 1900.

The orchestra left the least compelling music for last, winding up the evening with Revueltas' La Noche de los Mayas (The Night of the Mayas), a suite drawn from his score to a 1939 Mexican movie. The four movements do include an impressive barrage of percussion, as well as a lovely little duet for flute and violin, but the patchwork effect of the work was typical of a movie score: You really do need the pictures that inspired the music.

Top

 

Source: St. Petersburg Times
Published: October 4, 2009
By: John Fleming

Stefan Sanderling and Florida Orchestra ready for new season

Stefan Sanderling begins his seventh year as music director of The Florida Orchestra with next weekend's season-opening concerts, conducting a Latin program that ranges from Piazzolla's tango-style Concerto for Guitar and Bandoneon to de Falla's ballet El Amor Brujo (Love Bewitched). A few months ago, Sanderling, 45, renewed his contract through the 2013-14 season, and I wanted to see if he has a road map for the future of the orchestra, which is facing the most difficult economic environment for the arts in its 41-year history. The orchestra essentially balanced its $10 million budget in the fiscal year that ended in June, but not without some creative accounting, and the musicians were expected to have to vote on accepting a pay cut before this season gets under way. When I interviewed him 10 days ago, Sanderling spoke by phone from Toledo, Ohio, where he is principal conductor of the Toledo Symphony, a post he has held since 2004. He was rehearsing the orchestra there for its season-opening performance of Mahler's massive Third Symphony, which he will return to with the Florida Orchestra Oct. 23-25. During the summer, Sanderling is music director of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra at the historic Chautauqua Institution in western New York. When we talked, Sanderling had just returned from a month in Europe, including a stay in his hometown of Berlin to celebrate the 97th birthday of his father, the eminent former conductor Kurt Sanderling.

How's your father doing?

Well, he's 97. He sometimes complains because he's outlived almost all his colleagues. We had a wonderful birthday party for him. His former orchestra, the Berlin Symphony, came and played the Valse Triste in the garden. It's a piece by Sibelius that he has always loved.

The orchestra is playing the Sibelius Fifth Symphony and The Swan of Tuonela this season. Are you on a Sibelius campaign?

I love his music very much, and the later the symphonies, the more I love them. I can't say I'm on a campaign, but I feel that people should hear it.

Your father must have done a lot of Sibelius.

He recorded all of the symphonies.

How do you feel your father's influence on your conducting now that you're 45?

That is a very complex question. I have my life and it is quite far away from his life, both geographically and timewise. In terms of music making, I always ask for his opinion. But you know, musical taste and musical approach change over time, and what was right 30 years ago or 50 years ago is not necessarily right today, and what was right for my father is not necessarily right for me. Musical decisions always have to be your own. Nothing is worse than listening to five recordings, or five opinions, and taking the best of them and thinking that makes a great interpretation. It never does. When I conduct a new piece, I gather information, of course, from my father because he's the closest colleague I have, and I gather information from other people. But at the end I have to make my own decisions, my own mistakes, my own deviations.

What are some examples of things you might talk with him about that have changed through the years?

The way you played Bach and Handel 50 years ago was so fundamentally different from what it is today. Tempo in Beethoven symphonies. The problem of vibrato and legato playing in Brahms symphonies. It is interesting for me to know how my father learned a piece and how his interpretation changed over the years.

How's his Shostakovich Sixth Symphony, which you're conducting this season? He, after all, knew Shostakovich.

There, with Shostakovich, I have this huge privilege of getting biographical information firsthand, because my father was there when it was premiered. So that is maybe an advantage. But you still have to have your own ideas and emotions about it. And nobody helps you with your own emotions. You cannot steal those from somebody else. You have to have your own emotions.

Your opening program features a bandoneon. What is a bandoneon?

A bandoneon is something like an accordion. I like its melancholy sound very much in this tango music by Piazzolla. I have always liked Piazzolla if you don't play too much of it. If you play a whole evening of Piazzolla you find out there's only so much variation to it.

He's like the Vivaldi of South America.

Yeah, it's a little bit like that. But what we are doing is just perfect, I think, with such an eclectic program. An opening concert is sort of a statement. Last year we had the audience singing a Bach chorale. More and more I have come to realize that the regular way of doing concerts — an overture, a concerto and a symphony — is no longer enough. We have to do something special.

What's it feel like to get back with the orchestra after the summer?

For me, it's always curiosity. Over the years, I have gotten to know what to expect, but after not having been with the orchestra for four months, I'm curious how it will feel.

Does the orchestra need time to get its chops back?

I think everyone individually is right there, but as an orchestra, we need a little time to remember each other. That's why the repertoire of the first concert is always very important. That it is challenging enough that nobody is bored but also music where we hear each other right away.

This is a tough time for orchestras. Do you see a difference between the U.S. and Europe?

It's completely different in the way the arts are financed. In Europe it was proven long ago that orchestras and opera companies and theaters and the arts as a whole are an essential part of society. But here we have to prove our right to exist every day.

The financial crisis that we've been going through in the last year hit The Florida Orchestra, the Toledo Symphony and Chautauqua right away. In a couple of weeks donations dried up and people spent less money going to concerts. But in Europe, where the money is funneled through the government, this process takes a lot longer. When a crisis hits in Europe they form about 680 committees to study it, and by the time you're at the 681st committee, the crisis is over. I cannot say there is more money in Europe but it is more evenly distributed. In healthy years the money is not much more than in other years, but in bad years it's not much less. Here the impact of a bad year is so direct and sudden. That is a quite a difference, and the most important difference is in programming.

How so?

We constantly have to pay attention to the box office, when it might be better for us to expand our repertoire and go into uncharted territory, which might cost us support in the short run from the audience that only wants to hear Tchaikovsky.

What we are facing at the moment is that our core, main repertoire shrinks every year. What used to be middle-of-the-road repertoire 10 years ago included the Brahms symphonies, but it doesn't anymore. If you talk to the marketing people, they'll tell you a Brahms symphony doesn't bring anyone in. What do you do with this information? Do you play the Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony every other year? This is a philosophical question that quickly becomes a practical question and has to do with the survival of the orchestra. I worry about what will happen in 10 years when Tchaikovsky Five won't guarantee a full house anymore.

What's the kind of repertoire you'd like to introduce here?

I'm waiting for the moment to play Schoenberg's Op. 31, the Variations for Orchestra. It's one of the centerpieces of 12-tone music, but it has to wait until I come up with the rest of the program.

What would you pair it with?

Probably Mozart. It has to be something either that explains Schoenberg or is so different that you are willing to have two worlds in one concert.

You seem to be laying the groundwork with other 12-tone works. Last season, it was the Berg Violin Concerto; this season, Webern's Passacaglia.

These things don't just happen by accident. For everything we program, there is a plan behind it. You have to prepare the audience. You have to get everyone on the same page. Schoenberg belongs to the repertoire of a high-end, important orchestra at the beginning of the 21st century, and it belongs to the audience. I don't demand that everybody loves it, but I certainly hope that everybody has enough interest to listen.

One of the ongoing problems in Tampa has been lack of access to Morsani Hall, and it continues this season with many of your concerts at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center being played in the smaller Ferguson Hall. Have you made your peace with Ferguson?

No. I'm a musician and an artist, and I cannot make peace with things. I can accept that I am told that there are no other possibilities. But I cannot make peace with a situation where I know it's not good for the orchestra.

Yet the first time I heard you conduct was in Ferguson. It was a Brahms symphony and it was a knockout. That performance basically won you the job here.

A certain repertoire goes okay in Ferguson. The orchestra has to be small enough. Otherwise, it just becomes too loud. Brahms is still possible in Ferguson. But a lot of the music people want to hear was written after Brahms. For a Tchaikovsky Fourth or Fifth Symphony, the volume of air in the hall is simply not big enough to have a satisfying performance. The problem is that we have to choose our programs before we know if we can get into Morsani or not.

Finally, there's a question I've always wanted to ask a conductor. What do you think about or feel during the middle of a performance while you're on the podium?

It depends so much on what repertoire it is. In Mahler's Third Symphony I feel a little bit like I'm in an opera. All the music is so dramatic. So many things are going through my mind: Images, colors, words. For certain pieces of music, I have phrases. Sometimes it helps me to find the mood. In the Brahms Fourth Symphony, I always feel, "Farewell my friend, I have to go.'' Because that's what the music is about. Brahms Four is about farewell, especially the first movement.

Top

 

Source: St. Petersburg Times
Published: October 3, 2009
By: John Fleming

Florida Orchestra musicians strike deal on salaries

ST. PETERSBURG - Florida Orchestra musicians have ratified a modification of their labor contract that will amount to a 5.5 percent cut in pay they were to receive this season.

"The world has changed drastically in the last year," said president Michael Pastreich, citing the recession's impact on orchestra finances as the reason for renegotiating the contract.

"We recognized that the contract called for more of an increase than the orchestra could responsibly make," said bass trombonist Harold Van Schaik, chairman of the orchestra musicians committee. "In essence, it's a pay freeze."

This was to be the third year of a three-year labor contract that called for base pay of $30,390, but instead the base will be $28,800 for 31 weeks, roughly the same as last season. The negotiations added two years to the agreement, through the 2011-12 season. Pay will increase to a base of $32,000 for 34 weeks in the final year. Pension and health benefits were also renegotiated.

Principal players make more than scale under the contract, and most orchestra members individually negotiate salaries over scale. The contract covers 76 full-time musicians.

Negotiations began in early September, and musicians completed voting Thursday. Longtime orchestra members have been through it all before, with previous contract revisions that meant less pay than promised.

"It feels like Groundhog Day," said Van Schaik, though he characterized the talks as agreeable under the circumstances. "If one has to go through a renegotiation, this was a textbook of how it should be done."

The revised contract will save $250,000 this season. "We have been able to keep our commitment to full programming," Pastreich said. "We're still doing Mahler Three with its massive forces." Mahler's Third Symphony, to be performed Oct. 23-25, will have 98 players.

Symphony orchestras around the country have been renegotiating musicians' contracts. The pay cuts have been as high as 19 percent, at the Charlotte Symphony in North Carolina.

Florida Orchestra musicians, off during the summer, return for a first rehearsal Wednesday at Mahaffey Theater and season-opening masterworks concerts Friday through Oct. 11.

Top

 

Source: St. Petersburg Times
Published: August 2, 2009
By: John Fleming

Florida Orchestra balances budget, and that's saying something

ST. PETERSBURG - The Florida Orchestra expects to report a balanced budget for the fiscal year that ended on June 30. That is a significant achievement in a terrible economy.

"I think our board, our team, did extraordinary things,'' president Michael Pastreich said. "We had a phenomenal year. The question now is, are we going to repeat it?''

The figures are not audited, and there were accounting moves still in the works last week, but Pastreich said the orchestra will essentially break even in its budget of $10.2 million for 2008-09.

Since Pastreich arrived in October 2007, the orchestra has raised an impressive amount of money in an effort to reverse decades of financial problems. More than $14 million has been pledged as part of a sustainability campaign to pay off debt and stabilize the organization. The campaign's goal is $30 million.

To finish in the black, the orchestra had to resort to some creative measures, such as asking one donor to move a $300,000 gift designated for 2012-13 into this past fiscal year. But the board had little choice because it promised a balanced budget.

"We've told donors that if we fail to make our goals this year you don't need to pay your future pledges, which in essence could bring about the end of the orchestra,'' Pastreich said. "But I believe in hard-core economics. If we can't demonstrate our viability over time, we don't deserve to exist.''

This past year, the orchestra paid off $525,000 in bank debt, leaving it with long-term debt of about $2 million. That's a lot, but it could be worse. The North Carolina Symphony, a comparable orchestra, closed its books on 2008-09 with $4 million in debt.

To project a balanced budget for next season, the orchestra has cut costs of $550,000 since January, including laying off three management staffers and reducing pay and benefits. In July, Pastreich said there was still about $250,000 in cuts to be found. He declined to comment on whether the musicians' labor contract would have to be renegotiated, though it seems likely.

Fundraising won't get any easier as the recession drags on. For example, the city of Tampa appropriated $320,000 to the orchestra last fiscal year, but that has been cut by 20 percent. Less public funding will probably mean fewer free outdoor concerts.

"I think government money is going to vanish,'' Pastreich said. "I think corporate sponsorship is going to be really hard to come by. That means more pressure falls on raising individual support.''

Along with a balanced budget, the orchestra has promised donors that the number of subscribers to its masterworks series will grow by 5 percent a year. "Masterworks is the center of our economic engine,'' Pastreich said.

The best attended masterworks programs last season included Verdi's Requiem and Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, both with the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay.

In mid July, masterworks subscriptions were 2,358, or about 2 percent ahead of a year ago. "We're ahead of the curve, but we're not ahead enough,'' Pastreich said. "Are we able to pull off a 5 percent increase in this environment when almost no orchestra is doing that this year? We've got some tricks up our sleeve, and several months to work on it, but it's a risk.''

The season opens Oct. 9 with music director Stefan Sanderling on the podium for a Latin-themed program featuring guitarist Manuel Barrueco in Astor Piazzolla's concerto for guitar and bandoneón, a type of accordion.

A bright spot is the series of morning coffee concerts, conducted by Alastair Willis at Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg. A seventh concert has been added, and subscriptions are running 9 percent ahead of last year.

Though the masterworks and coffee series are growing, the pops series is not. Pops subscription sales are off more than 7 percent from a year ago. They are way down in Tampa, where half of the eight programs will not be played because the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center is unavailable, primarily due to its heavy Broadway schedule. Pops sales are also off at Mahaffey.

One possible reason for the falloff is that leadership of the series is in flux, with Richard Kaufman leaving after five years as principal pops conductor and no replacement named. There are a couple of potential successors on the schedule this coming season — Jeff Tyzik and Matt Catingub — but Pastreich indicated that the orchestra will probably go another season or two without a principal pops conductor as it tries to determine a new strategy. "Part of the debate is whether we have a pops conductor,'' he said.

Pops programming can be terribly hit and miss. Last season had some successes, including the movie music of John Williams and the virtuoso string trio Time for Three, but too often the concerts rely on the tired old formula of show tunes and variety acts.

More innovative programs lately have been nonsubscription specials such as a Pink Floyd tribute or the orchestra playing the score during a screening of The Wizard of Oz.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

 

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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."

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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.

Top

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."

Top

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."

Top