By Márcio Bezerra
Among the benefits of the immigration waves of late 19th through early 20th centuries in this country was the building of classical music institutions that still benefit our society.
Despite her younger age and lack of governmental support, America has some of the best orchestras, opera companies, and music schools in the world. Of those, none has a more hallowed history than the Curtis Institute, which is celebrating its centennial this year.
In fact, the Institute’s list of alumni is a veritable “who’s who” in classical music: From Bernstein to Lang Lang, from Nino Rota to Yuja Wang, the tuition-free program at Curtis is a reliable maker of musical careers.
What an opportunity it was, then, to have heard the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, which played for the first time at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts on a rainy, but musically glorious, Sunday afternoon (Dec. 11).
Make no mistake; this is no regular student orchestra. That was clear from the all-American program, which made no concessions for crowd pleasers and was performed with the finesse and attention to detail only the top orchestras can produce.
They opened the afternoon with T.J. Cole’s Death of the Poet, a work from 2014. Beautifully written, the pensive score was inspired by a German Expressionist painting and it is built as an arch that intensifies by midpoint until it retreats to a fading end.
Conducted by graduate student conductor Yoann Combémorel, it received a refined reading, which impressed by the strings’ dynamic control, cohesion, and perfect intonation.
Next, guest conductor Teddy Abrams and violinist Ray Chen joined the orchestra for Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto (Op. 14). Barber, who, like Cole, also studied at Curtis, composed his concerto in 1939 for a patron who (like many others) was not satisfied with the final product and did not premiere it.
It has nevertheless found favor with violinists, thanks to its devilishly difficult last movement, a moto perpetuo in which the soloist flies through 110 measures without pause. But what really captivates the audiences is its sunny first movement, a piece that is almost too gorgeous for its own sake.
Ray Chen gave the work a virtuosic reading, tackling the finale without any reservations. The orchestra performed as an equal partner, playing the technically difficult passages with gusto and bringing a refined tone to the more lyrical ones.
As a result, the audience erupted as a single body in a well-deserved ovation. Chen, who mentioned the fact that he had to audition twice for Curtis, obliged with one of his “audition” pieces for the institute, Nicolò Paganini’s Caprice No. 21.
The second half of the program was even more ambitious, as it presented the towering Symphony No. 3 by Aaron Copland. A vast work written during World War II, it resembles in rhetoric and scale some Soviet works written in the same period. But Copland’s melodic and harmonic simplicity and his self-quotation of his Fanfare for the Common Man make the symphony sound quintessentially American.
Apart from a few rough interventions by the brass section, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra performed the monumental symphony as an excellent professional ensemble. Abrams brought up the best from each orchestral section and allowed the performers to work as chamber players in the more intimate passages.
It should be noted that, similarly to what happened at the Vienna Philharmonic last season, the audience was noticeably more literate than in other events and refrained from clapping between movements, even after some very thrilling endings. All in all, a glorious afternoon of music making that brought some hope (and hope we need!) for the future of classical music in this country.