Editor’s note: Here is a late orchestral review from last month. Technical difficulties prevented it from being posted until now:
South Florida Symphony (March 11, Crest Theatre, Delray Beach)
The South Florida Symphony has had something of a rocky history over the past couple years, with short funding and repeated complaints about overdue payments to its freelance personnel.
But the orchestra once known as the Key West Symphony perseveres under its director, Sebrina Maria Alfonso, and judging by a concert early last month at the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach’s Old School Square, she has assembled a solid team of professionals who are able to handle an impressive range of musical challenges.
In the concert, which was the third and final program of its season, the orchestra stuffed itself onto the smallish stage of the Crest for a varied bill of Romantic and 20th-century works, and played them well.
Pianist Jeffrey Chappell was the soloist in the Brahms Concerto No. 2 (in B-flat, Op. 83), and the half-full house at the Crest was treated to an epic solo-and-orchestra work at very close quarters. Chappell, a professor at Maryland’s Goucher College, has been making other appearances in South Florida during the season, particularly in the symphony’s chamber music series at the Arts Garage.
He is a very good pianist, with a strong, reliable technique, and he played with the confidence of a man who has learned this very difficult piece thoroughly and for whom its terrors are akin to those of the childhood monster under the bed: long conquered. If he does not play with a great sense of drama, he does at least have a sense of generosity and bigness; he was most compelling in the delicious lightness he gave to the main theme of the final movement, which tripped away beguilingly.
The principal horn player did an admirable job throughout, beginning with the exposed opening bars, and the solo cellist in the third movement took center stage with a highly emotional, intense reading of this celebrated section. Alfonso and the orchestra were good partners for Chappell, and again, the close quarters enabled the audience to hear the piece almost as a gigantic chamber work rather than a behemoth.
The group had scheduled the Fifth Symphony of South Florida’s own Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, but substituted the composer’s Fantasy for Orchestra instead to lead off the second half of the concert. Like much of her music, this is a forceful Beethovenian essay crafted with skill and care, and it makes a very effective addition to an orchestral program.
The work is in four movements, and had its premiere in Long Beach, Calif., under JoAnn Falletta in 1994. It apparently has had to wait until now for its Florida premiere, which, as its composer still lives part-time in Pompano Beach, seems something long overdue. The music was inspired by the sights and sounds of Italy’s Lombardy region, and the first movement (Fantasia) uses as its starting point the sound of church bells, which are used in an evocative, mysterious way that allows Zwilich to also write some beautiful, fat chords.
The second movement, Temporale, is a very effective piece of storm music writing, with vigorous work from the strings, and the third, Lento, offered a lovely English horn solo over pizzicato celli and basses. This movement also was reminiscent of Debussy, not just in harmonic style but also in its orchestral touches, such as when the brasses were brought in and gave the music a whole new color.
The finale, Allegro vivo, suggested by battling gulls, was virtuosic and muscular, and punctuated by orchestral punches that ended the piece in athletic fashion. It’s a piece I would like to hear again, but it struck me on this sole outing to be a work of substantial interest and craft, and unlike many of the currently fashionable contemporary pieces in the classical universe, more serious and more erudite, but never remote or insular.
It provides a good deal of difficult work for its musicians, as well as good solo moments for several instruments, and the South Florida Symphony performed it with a clear sense of engagement and commitment. Conductors looking for something along the lines of the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra might consider the Zwilich Fantasy as a fresh substitute.
The concert opened with one of Antonin Dvorak’s last symphonic poems, The Noon Witch (Op. 108), an evocation of a ghastly little folk tale about the horrible things that can happen to kids who misbehave. Overall, this was a solid and clean account of the piece, with good woodwind work in the opening bars and fine string ensemble after that, which set up nice contrast with the other sections as the piece progressed.
The concert closed with the Festive Overture of Shostakovich (Op. 96). The entrance of the main theme, which is semi-modeled on Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila overture, was somewhat shaky in the cellos at first, but soon everything was right on track, and this very popular piece came off admirably.
I’m not sure how often this particular group of freelancers will be assembled for the South Florida Symphony, but the group that played the Crest on March 11 was a strong one, and future iterations will no doubt be able to add some real symphonic enjoyment to the region’s seasonal menu.
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Violinist Lara St. John appears with the orchestra Tuesday, Nov. 20, at the Crest to play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (in D, Op. 35) on a program with the Bruckner Fourth Symphony. On Jan. 15, 2013, pianist Natasha Paremski solos in the Rachmaninov Third Concerto (in D minor, Op. 30); also on the program are Sibelius’ Pohjola’s Daughter, Richard Strauss’ Macbeth, and Debussy’s March Ecossaise. The third concert, set for April 9, 2013, features cellist Zuill Bailey in the Cello Concerto of Edward Elgar. That concert also includes the Rosamunde overture of Schubert and the Brahms Second Symphony (in D, Op. 73). For more information, call 954-522-8445 or visit www.southfloridasymphony.org.