REVIEW: TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/GUILLERMO FIGUEROA

posted by James Reel

    What happened to the tam-tam? At the end of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, the full orchestra punches out a series of loud, crackling chords; the last one includes a tam-tam stroke that should reverberate for half a bar after the rest of the orchestra has gone silent. Rachmaninov wants the work to end not with a bang, but a shimmer. But last night’s Tucson Symphony performance under guest conductor Guillermo Figueroa ended merely with the pounding full-orchestra chords, no tam-tam to be heard. Was Figueroa wrongheadedly trying to make Rachmaninov’s music more tasteful? Or did the designated percussionist simply forget to step over to the tam-tam for the last couple of measures?
    It’s unfortunate that these were the thoughts knocking around in my head as I left the concert hall, because nearly everything that had happened up to that last note was splendid. In fact, this was one of the finest TSO performances I’ve heard in a long time.
    The orchestra usually responds very well to guest conductors, and Figueroa drew playing of rhythmic precision and tonal refinement from the musicians. The Puerto Rico-born Figueroa is a distinguished violinist with a taste for contemporary music, a former concertmaster of the conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and current music director of the Puerto Rico and New Mexico symphony orchestras. For his first appearance with the TSO, he chose music of color, muscle and agility.
    Things got off to an impressive start with the Corsaire Overture of Hector Berlioz. The playing was full of vitality; at the same time, the strings negotiated their scurrying opening lines cleanly—no easy feat—and the contrasting slow theme was played quite broadly, with great warmth. The sonorous brass chords boasted perfect intonation; the section gleamed, without overpowering the strings and winds (a chronic problem with this orchestra in the TCC Music Hall).
    These assets carried over into the performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1, a work that forecasts many of the characteristics of Shostakovich’s later symphonies, with its disintegrating march-waltz first movement laying the foundation for the knotty Fourth Symphony, the vicious and brawny second movement setting the pattern for later scherzos, and the slightly overextended third and fourth movements revealing a poor sense of architectural balance that would afflict Shostakovich’s otherwise admirable Sixth through Tenth symphonies.
    Figueroa highlighted the symphony’s many contrasts of character; in the first movement, for example, he got the woodwind principals to play their solos with pretty delicacy, leaving the acerbic mockery to the strings. Indeed, through the course of the work almost every principal had at least a brief, exposed solo, and each one came off with accuracy and personality. Consider cellist Nelzimar Neves, playing with her customary open-hearted warmth in the last movement, or concertmaster Steven Moeckel, properly snotty in the first movement and almot but not quite syrupy in the last. Figueroa conducted the slow movement with special breadth and patience, but he pulled out all the stops in the big moments of the second and fourth movements, getting the orchestra to play with great power yet never blaring.
    Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances did not receive quite so sure a reading; the woodwinds were sometimes hard to hear, as they often are under music director George Hanson, and saxophonist Michael Hester’s gorgeous solo in the first of the three dances was accompanied by several reed squeaks elsewhere in the wind section, a rare occurrence in this orchestra. Yet overall the performance abounded in both firm rhythms and free lyricism. The second dance was suitably languid and decadent, and the last dance balanced dreamy restlessness with forceful impulse.
    The musicians seemed to love Figheroa, and he is clearly adept at conveying his good ideas about sound quality and musical intepretation to the players. If George Hanson, who has led the TSO since 1996, decides to move on when his contract expires in 2008, I wouldn’t be at all disappointed if the orchestra romanced Figueroa for the job. First, though, he’d have to come back and show what he can do in a greater diversity of repertory—perhaps some Mozart, Debussy and Brahms. And maybe when he returned he could find that missing tam-tam.