REVIEW: TUCSON SYMPHONY/CHRISTOPHER O'RILEY

posted by James Reel

    Members of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra used to require some settling-in after their long summer break, but they and music director George Hanson were already in top form for last night’s season-opening concert. It was a program packed with flashy, colorful music, which is exactly the sort of thing the TSO does best.
    The potential disappointment on the program was the loss of a piece by contemporary composer Roberto Sierra; TSO officials, slamming their heads against the door of their depleted bank vault, were dazed enough to believe they could improve anything by jettisoning all the high-rental scores (meaning the most interesting pieces) and replacing them with safer material from the library. But for this week’s concerts, at least, Hanson did something smart: He revived Wondrous Night, which Tucson composer Dan Coleman wrote for the orchestra a couple of years ago. New music rarely gets a second outing, so a repeat of Coleman’s little six-minute opener was most welcome. It’s an attractive item; Coleman’s use of light percussion, high woodwinds and trumpets creates a starry sparkle. The work’s ecstatic throb and shimmer calls to mind portions of John Adams’ Harmonielehre, and the orchestra played with apparent relish.
    Pianist Christopher O’Riley made his long-overdue return to the TSO. In 1991, his last engagement with the orchestra, he was embedded in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. This time he had the spotlight to himself in Prokofiev’s more challenging Piano Concerto No. 3. Both O’Riley and Hanson presented this as an essentially lyrical rather than percussive work, from clarinetist Jeremy Reynolds’ liquid solo at the beginning through O’Riley’s frequent cascades of nimble passagework. Again, the word “sparkle” comes to mind in a work that too many soloists treat as an opportunity to hammer the klavier, and O’Riley’s light touch cast into strong relief the passages of truly beefy chordal writing.
    O’Riley brought a slightly boozy swing to the theme of the second, variation movement, and he gave the last movement real impetus through his clear articulation and rhythmic definition. Hanson and the orchestra provided completely sympathetic partnership, except that, as frequently happens here, the the strings often vanished into the tutti passages.
    As an encore, O’Riley offered one of his transcriptions of Radiohead songs; most of these items don’t have a strong enough melodic profile to hold up without their lyrics, but this one at least featured enough odd modulations to sustain attention. Even so, its main interest lay in its elements of technical display; O’Riley almost made this trifle seem a flashier piece than the whole Prokofiev concerto.
    For the concert’s second half, Hanson trotted out the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique for the second time in four years. This is way too soon for an orchestra with a limited schedule; why not the same composer’s Harold in Italy or the orchestra-only half of Roméo et Juliette instead? In consolation, Hanson and company did make the opium-crazed symphony worth hearing again.
    The first two movements really belong to the strings, and the TSO players and Hanson beautifully brought out the music’s surging lyricism. Through sensitive use of rubato and little dynamic swells, the musicians neatly conveyed the first movement’s lovesick sighs, and the violins beautifully sang out the idée fixe, the theme that threads through the entire symphony. (Hanson, by the way, wisely kept the musical action moving by ignoring the exposition repeat.) In the second movement, if the violins lacked the last measure of mercurial ballroom grace, they came close enough. Principal trumpeter Ed Reid took the cornet option in this waltz movement, and blended the instrument’s sweet tone well with the rest of the ensemble rather than sailing out over it all.
    The third movement featured some especially fine offstage solos by oboist Lindabeth Binkley and English hornist Sara Kramer. (The oboe section’s William Balentine left the stage for a while, so he may have been involved in this, too; the players were out of sight, but at least it’s obvious they weren’t clarinetists, as falsely reported by the Arizona Daily Star’s nonspecialist critic.)
    The “March to the Scaffold” came off with all the necessary fiendish pomp. The final “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” got off to a grab-you-by-the-throat start, but the performance then lost a bit of momentum coming out of the intoning of the sinister Dies Irae theme. Still, Hanson whipped up plenty of energy for the final bars.
    The evening included a few brief extras, some worthwhile and others decidedly not. Before the Berlioz, Hanson gave a superb, succinct introduction that linked the music’s storyline to its structure. After came a rousing encore, melding “When the Saints Go Marching In” with fragments of Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus, meant to inspire the audience to contribute to the Gulf Coast Orchestra Relief Fund.
    But the evening began with an unnecessary little speech by the orchestra’s president that didn’t do anything that couldn’t be accomplished by a line of type in the printed program; at least she didn’t hawk raffle tickets. Then came a pompous arrangement of  “To Anacreon in Heaven,” an English drinking song whose vocal range can be negotiated only by drunkards. We know it as the national anthem, a dreadful ditty poorly fit with dated, bellicose lyrics. Patriotism is not noble; it’s a combination of xenophobia and overweening pride, barely one step above brute tribalism. As Samuel Johnson might have noted, this is bad music pandering to scoundrels who shouldn't be taking refuge in the concert hall.