REVIEW: BARRY DOUGLAS/TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

posted by James Reel

    There’s nothing less imaginative than a “Three Bs” concert—Bach, Beethoven, Brahms—unless one goes fishing around for some attractive oddities among those thrice-familiar composers’ works. That’s what George Hanson did last night to launch his 12th season as music director of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. The first half held no surprises: the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in an incisive, controlled performance featuring Barry Douglas. The second half contained the unexpected items: Ottorino Respighi’s orchestration of Bach’s Passacaglia in C minor, and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, again showcasing Douglas and including a cameo appearance by the Tucson Symphony Chorus.
    First it was necessary to suffer through 10 minutes of non-musical junk: an audience sing-along version of the Star-Spangled Banner—bad music imposed upon bad lyrics, badly sung—and a pep talk by the orchestra board’s president. Save it for the people who haven’t already bought tickets and need some persuading. Perhaps this was a subtle measure of damage control, as was the presence outside the hall of perky cotillion girls in their little black dresses, chirping “Welcome to the symphony!” to arriving (if scant) audience members. Management and its allies probably figured they had to do something to counteract the low-key, dignified presence of musicians outside the hall quietly publicizing their troubled contract negotiations, not to mention a recent article in the Tucson Weekly detailing the TSO’s ongoing financial trouble and its needless feud with the Tucson Symphony Women’s Association.
    What matters most to the public is what happens on the Music Hall stage, and last night’s music-making was exceptionally solid, though it held no real interpretive surprises. Hanson and the orchestra opened the Brahms concerto with well-judged contrast between the dramatic first subject and tragic-lyrical second. The violin playing was crisply articulated if not as juicy-toned as one might wish in Brahms, the woodwinds and brass blended into and emerged from the ensemble admirably and new timpanist Kimberly Toscano played with both forcefulness and control. In the first-movement climaxes, though, the lower string sound was poorly defined, and the orchestra didn’t achieve its proper fullness until the quieter second movement.
    As for Douglas, he got off to an arresting start with some powerful trills, but his approach to most of the first movement was patrician; until the outburst in the development section that brings back the first theme, Douglas’ manner would not have been inappropriate in the slow movement of a Mozart concerto. In the slow movement he produced greater variety of tone, pearly in the outer sections and stentorian in the middle. Only in the concluding Rondo did Douglas display the grand-manner extroversion you’d expect of a Tchaikovsky Competition gold medalist, and ultimately it seemed right that he withheld it until the finale.
    Respighi’s orchestration of the Bach Passacaglia, originally for organ, deserves to be played much more often. The original score lends itself well to the Respighi treatment, richer and more colorful than the Ancient Airs and Dances but less raucous than the Roman trilogy. It’s an expert orchestration that often evokes the organ without being hobbled to organ sonorities, and the TSO played it beautifully—here, at least, was the lush sound missing from most of the Brahms. It was a fine showcase of what an adept orchestra and sympathetic conductor can do.
    Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy has quite different requirements, and the performers met them well. It’s mostly the pianist’s show, and Douglas knew exactly what to do with this strange piece; his playing was effervescent and witty, not settling into the pomposity that can make the score seem like such a parody. Hanson kept the orchestral lines clear and balanced, and the choral work was excellent—dynamic and crisp. Given the orchestra’s financial trouble, it seems unwise to bring out the full, paid chorus for merely five minutes of work, but the performance was good enough to make one forget, just for a while, those unpleasant realities.