REVIEW: TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/ EDGAR MEYER

posted by James Reel

    The first rule of concert criticism is to discuss what happened, not what should have happened. But the absence of a particular major work from the current Tucson Symphony concert cycle reveals that the orchestra is stumbling unsurely through its current financial crisis.
    Last spring, the TSO announced that this week’s concerts would include Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1, a work the orchestra hasn’t played in the 30 years I’ve been attending, and perhaps not ever. Barber’s First is just one weak finale short of being the Great American Symphony, a powerful, concise, melodic work that should appeal to concertgoers of every taste. But it was one of many compositions yanked from the schedule in a cost-cutting move and replaced with something else, in this case Aaron Copland’s all-too-familiar suite from Rodeo. Supposedly the orchestra is saving money by pulling the Copland from its library rather than renting or buying the parts of the Barber symphony. That’s the only possible source of savings. First, the orchestra has to pay royalties for either score.Second, the Barber doesn’t require the participation of any musicians who weren’t already onstage for Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, which in fact is the one piece in the current cycle that requires a lot of extra players, but got through the cuts unscathed. Third, if TSO officials secretly believed that Copland would fill more seats than Barber, let that claim echo through the Music Hall, which was little more than half full last night.
    When an orchestra has money trouble, the last thing it should mess with is its programming; that only disappoints and alienates its core audience, rather than gaining sympathy for the financial plight. Sure, works that include a lot of extra paid musicians, like Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand, can reasonably be set aside, but the rest of an announced schedule should remain sacred, except under the most dire of circumstances. First you eliminate administrative waste. Then you have your development staff and board raise money to cover all reasonable artistic costs—or replace them with people who can. Couldn’t someone have approached potential donors with a “Save Our Season” list, asking for a donation of $X specifically to cover acquisition of the Barber score, $X for a threatened Kodály score, and so forth? Donors like to fund something tangible; a little campaign like this would surely have brought in some much-needed money, and helped the TSO keep its promises to its audience.
    As for what did happen at last night’s concert, it was an all-American program, including the aforementioned Copland and Bernstein works, with bassist Edgar Meyer soloing in his own Bass Concerto No. 1. The composition is as eclectic and self-assured as you’d expect from Meyer, who can play Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet one night (which he’s done here in Tucson) and jam with fiddler Mark O’Connor the next. The first two movements of the 1993 concerto are earthy and bluesy, sometimes a little jazzy, and the last movement is rooted in bluegrass, but Meyer makes all the elements work naturally in a classical setting.
    Despite its size, the bass projects poorly, so Meyer generally kept the dynamics of the smallish orchestra low, except for a few tutti passages during which he didn’t play. His tone was lean, even ghostly in the slow movement, which he played without vibrato. As attractive as the score was and as adeptly as Meyer played it, though, the sound projection and most of the musical gestures were too small for the 2,200-seat hall; it all would have worked better in more intimate confines. Meyer offered a suite of three encores: the fluidly played Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, and two original, jazz-oriented pieces, displaying Meyer’s ease in that idiom, whether the music was bowed or pizz.
    Conductor George Hanson and the TSO supported Meyer sympathetically, even prettily, but the strings’ sometimes spongy if accurate rhythm did not bode well for the Copland and Bernstein in the second half. As it turned out, the strings were able to dig into those more outgoing scores, except for a passage early in the West Side Story dances, when they couldn’t quite manage lyricism and sharp accents at the same time. Rodeo came off well (except for a pedestrian treatment of the “Corral Nocturne”), with the final “Hoe-Down” good and beefy, and Hanson and the orchestra brought power and passion to the Xavier Cugat-nightmare sections of the Bernstein score. This was a relief, after their undercharacterized reading of Bernstein’s Fancy Free a couple of seasons ago, but everyone was fully involved in this performance, and in the sparkling encore, Bernstein’s Candide Overture.
    Much of the evening’s success went to the exuberant but well-balanced work of the brass section. Hanson arrayed those players across the back of the lower balcony for the concert opener, Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, and the result was full-bodied yet mellow-toned playing, absolutely free of the cracks that befall even the best players at certain points in the fanfare.